The Umbrella Chronicles: Island of Angels
by Mark 'Manix' Odell
Summary: Leon S Kennedy has a lot to worry about - A Nemesis chasing him, a blossoming Romance with Claire Redfield, a mysterious bond with Sherry Birkin and the constant threat of death on the Virus-ravaged Island of Angels, controlled by Umbrella. Yes, he has a


  
  
  
Welcome to Cambodia  
  
My name's Leon. Anything else I need to say? My family is immaterial, my past a black and white slide show. Okay, so a little bit of my past is essential. I think most of you know now that I was one of the survivors who escaped Raccoon City, Claire Redfield and me... and Sherry Birkin. We walked for miles after the train exploded, probably about fifteen miles in the day. We reached a long, godforsaken strip of tarmac that was Highway 9A. We managed to thumb a lift going to the nearest town, where we stayed for a few days before heading to New York City. The next two weeks are a blur to me. Does it really matter? No. It doesn't matter, really. After everything I saw, I don't care about anything except Claire and Sherry. We look after Sherry now; she needed parents after her parents died in Raccoon City. Where next? Claire disappeared in December, and arrived back about twenty days later. While we hadn't parted on the best of terms, and various abortive attempts at the US Government trying to cut a deal with me had failed - We'd ended up together again. She'd seen more of Umbrella's work, and had arrived in New York City just before Christmas. I was looking after Sherry until she got back, and Claire said that she wanted to go back and find the main base. Near Cambodia, she said. After reconciling, we were firm friends again.  
Me, Claire, Sherry and Chris (her brother, whom she finally found) were, therefore on a plane within the next two days. We took Sherry after some debate, until it was decided that she might not be safe on her own, and that she needed us to look after her. While her bond is stronger with Claire, Sherry and I also have a bond. I couldn't trace it at the time, although I shall reveal what it is later in my story.  
We arrived in Phnom Penh at about noon, it was maddeningly humid and it made the scar on my stomach itch. We made our way out of the cramped aircraft that was saturated with the unpleasant sour smell of two hundred sweating passengers, and into the uncomfortable heat of a hot day in Cambodia. The journey had been far from comfortable. Poor Sherry had felt unwell on the journey; so several visits to the toilet were made. The four bottles of spring water that I had taken with me had proven useful. In fact, they were so useful I had to give one to Sherry because the heat was pretty unbearable for her. It was humid outside, but at least we weren't cramped up anywhere. The passenger's lounge was large and noisy, its large interior packed with panicking tourists, determined backpackers and confused Airport officials who were trying to deal with American visitors who had lost their baggage on the luggage carousel. I sat, glued to my seat in the manner of a patient waiting for a diagnosis in hospital. I looked to my right; saw Sherry sitting down on her own seat, her legs dangling off the edge of the bench. She was a very small girl, I noticed and not for the first time. She was dressed in a summer shirt and green shorts, with a green jacket, cut off at the shoulders and with the blue shoes she always wore on her feet.   
"You okay Sherry?" I asked.  
She looked at me with a slightly tired look on her face.  
"Mm? Oh, yeah. I'm fine"  
"You look a little bit tired"  
"I didn't sleep well, I hope we'll be going to a hotel soon"  
"We will," I said. It was impossible not to like Sherry, and I liked her as much as she liked me. I couldn't help but let slip a smile.  
"You've got a nice smile," she said, smiling back at me.   
"Thanks" I said, genuinely flattered.  
She looked to her right, where Claire sat in conversation with her brother and looked back at me, saying in a conspiratorial whisper.   
"Are you and Claire going to...?"  
"Uh...Not yet"  
I knew what she was trying to tell me. This particular subject had been knocking around for a few months now, and Sherry had been particularly enthusiastic to the idea. Claire and I weren't ready yet, we knew that. First of all, we had to settle our little score with Umbrella. Until then I had to keep my feelings for Claire under wraps.   
"Never mind. You will though, won't you?"  
"Of course" I whispered back "let's just keep it as our secret, okay?"  
She nodded, and wiped her forehead.   
"It's hot"  
"We're in Cambodia, Sherry. It's very hot here" I felt that I might have been patronising her, but she took it the right way.   
"Yeah" she looked around the busy airport lounge, and then to Claire.  
"Sorry I was ignoring you Sherry, Chris and I had to talk" Claire said, smiling, immediately after finishing her conversation with Chris.   
"There's a hotel across town..." Chris explained "We can camp out there for a few nights, and by then we might know the location of the island"  
"Can we guarantee that?" I asked. I always seemed to ruin the best laid plans in the most satisfying moment of explanation.  
"No" Chris said "At the most it should take us a week"  
"Umbrella employs loads of people in town, we should be able to find a suitable candidate to tell us where this main island is" Claire added.  
There were more sounds of American tourists arguing with non-English speaking customs guards, and then Chris chose that moment for us to go.  
  
Where in town the bus took us I don't know, but it was certainly a pungent area. On the good side you could smell cooking wafting over from a small restaurant across the road that wasn't so much a restaurant more of a feeding shed. Along the roadsides there were traders selling whatever it was they could get their hands on, legally or not. There were all sorts of things ranging from Exotic herbs that the owners probably claimed improved your sex life, but were most probably stolen from Herb Gardens that dealt with rashes all the way up to hooky video recorders that had the instructions missing. You could buy almost anything here, it was said by the hotel manager, it just depended whether or not you'd be happy trying to find parts for the electronic equipment because there was a nine in ten chance that whatever you bought would have something missing.   
The bus stopped about fifteen metres from the hotel, which meant a busy push through thick crowds to the hotel entrance. Claire took Sherry's hand.  
"It'll be easy for you to get lost, so stick close to me" she said to her. We waded through the crowds. A Shoe trader tried to push a new pair of boots on Chris, but Chris declined - not entirely politely. The trader swore at Chris in Vietnamese, and he stumbled off back to his stand.  
The hotel was not particularly big, even though it had a flight of steps going up to the entrance. There were about four floors, and when we arrived in reception we knew we wouldn't exactly be receiving VIP treatment. The guy at reception gave us a dubious look when we made our request, and with four words   
"That's fifty dollars US" he was gone, leaving only the four keys for our rooms.   
  
  
Conversations with a Madman  
  
  
The third floor was a stretch of yellowish walls, stained by some unknown substance that was probably rat droppings. I opened the door of my room after a short battle with the lock, and stepped into the small room. It was a small space, only about seven by seven feet. The walls were paper thin, and the only protection I had from mosquitoes was the tiny amount of netting that adorned the tops of the walls. So this was Cambodia. My bed wasn't too bad, although after some inspection I managed to scare away the cockroaches that lurked underneath my bed. After a thorough inspection of the room, which involved me finding yet more cockroaches and a dead rat, I realised that the rooms weren't worth half the asking price.   
Suddenly, there was a shout from my right. It was Claire.   
"JESUS CHRIST!"  
I turned to the wall, and shouted  
"Are you okay, Claire?"  
"Does it sound like it?!" she snapped back.  
I sighed.  
"What's wrong?"  
"There's a goddamned rat in this room!"  
"So?"  
"You expect rats in sewers and drains, Leon. Not a hotel room!"  
"I've got about three thousand roaches in mine, and a dead rat"  
"Lucky you"  
When Claire got sarcastic, she was annoyed. When she was annoyed, it was best not to make fun of her.  
There was a squeak and a fleshy sound.  
"There! That's done it!" her now satisfied voice said.  
"Ouch. Remind me not to sneak into your room at night" Leon remarked, trying to make it sound as joking as possible.   
There was a slightly more distant voice. This time it was Sherry.  
"Ewwww!"   
"What is it?" Claire asked her.  
"This place is full of cockroaches!" her disgusted voice replied.  
"Do you want a hand getting rid of them?" she asked.  
"If you're offering, then yes please" she said, desperately.   
There was the sound of Claire's door closing, so I turned to my bed, and unpacked my essentials. I had a wash bag, containing deodorant, shampoo, a comb and toothpaste. I also had a towel, a few pairs of clean underwear and a pair of shorts that I sleep in.   
I lay back on my bed, listening to the strained sounds of a few German tourists a few rooms away. I knew there was a man in the room to my left, because I'd seen him go in. He was strangely quiet though, except for when he rolled himself a joint, because he just started laughing manically as smoke curled through the net.   
However, the man was a catalyst, a reason for my adventure. Because what was to happen that night was going to change my life, Claire's life, Sherry's life and Chris's life forever.  
  
I don't know what time it was when I was woken up. My room was dark, faintly blue thanks to the moonlight. I checked my watch.  
One A.M?  
'Gimme a break!' I grumbled as I tried to work out why I was awake. Sleeping was difficult for me. Ever since that day on September 29th, I don't think my dreams will ever be the same again. My dreams are always the same - Zombies, monsters and the vision of Dr Birkin transforming into the deformed beast he became before the explosion on the train finished him off. I never sleep very well, and the only way I can sleep is through a course of sleeping pills. I'm sure the others have the same trouble as me, because nobody could live through that nightmare and survive mentally unscarred. Especially Claire. Especially Chris, actually, who was the first S.T.A.R.S member to discover what was going on. It was him and Jill Valentine who investigated the creepy mansion outside Raccoon. It was him and Jill who had destroyed the Mansion and their disgusting creations in one blow. The destruction of the mansion, the death of several team-mates and a betrayal had started the S.T.A.R.S crusade against the forces trying to cover up the accident that had occurred there.   
Claire and I were drawn in purely of chance - I saved Claire from a rather sticky ending in a restaurant in town, where a Zombie was looking for the finishing touches to its meal, and I stopped to search a 'corpse' on the road, under the impression it was a hit and run victim. What I wasn't expecting was for the corpse to come to life, try to gnaw my foot off and nearly give me a pretty deep gash in my foot.   
That was months ago though, Chris and Claire went through the routine again - except Claire had been put on an island prison in the middle of nowhere. This was my first adventure since we escaped Raccoon City.   
Where was I? Oh yeah. What woke me.  
There was a scratching from the wall. At first I thought it was a rat, and this prompted me to go and check the wall. The walls were quite low, although I still had to climb on my bed to see where the noise was coming from.   
Suddenly, the deranged face of the stranger next door appeared at the net.  
"Surprise" he said softly, and not entirely unpleasantly.  
I nearly fell off the bed I was standing on, and the shock quickly changed to anger.  
"You bastard! You nearly scared me to death!"   
"Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry" he said, mostly truthfully although I could detect a hint of smugness underneath his apology. He was an Englishman, I could tell immediately. It was a soft accent, actually. It wasn't easily detectable, although being trained as a Police officer helped with telling what sort of person he was.   
"So you should be" I hissed.   
"Want to know why I woke you up?" he said, still grinning at me.   
"Yes"   
"I needed somebody to talk to"  
That was it?  
He practically made my heart lurch out of my throat, and he did it because he wanted company?  
"Oh, thanks. Next time I need to talk to you, I'll scare the hell out of you too" I was still annoyed with him after he scared me.   
"Hey, no need to screw at me! I just wanted to tell you something pretty important" he said, still quite softly. He showed not the slightest sign of annoyance with me.   
"What could you possibly know that I actually want to hear" I replied, testily.   
"I worked for Umbrella, you know them?"   
That statement suddenly caught my attention.  
"Yeah...I do...Worldwide pharmaceuticals company, also sneaky and conniving assholes"  
"You got that right, mate. They sure are. It's all smiles and clean, safe products on top and underneath? Sneaky as hell. Those roaches do more than research cough medicine, let me tell you"  
"I know that much" I replied, more as a statement than a reply.   
"Really? Met any of 'em before have you?" he asked me, still softly. No sarcasm. No double meanings. Just a plain question.  
"I survived the Raccoon disaster in September" I said. No point hiding the truth.  
"Well done" he said "so I guess you are the right person to tell"   
"Tell what?" I asked.   
"Umbrella's dirty secrets, that's what"  
"The viruses? I know about them"  
"Not just about the viruses - They've got a secret lab around here. Real top secret"  
This was a big stroke of luck. I was at first suspicious of the truth of his claims. Until he started to talk to me, that is.  
"The lab's about ninety miles south of Long - The coast port"  
"Uh huh" I muttered, just wanting him to get on with it.   
"By the way...What's your name?"  
"Leon. Leon Kennedy"  
The man looked a little shocked for a second, and then he returned to his previous expression. I never worked out why he was a little shocked until later.   
"Okay. Imagine this as I paint this picture in your head"  
  
An island. Ninety miles south of the coast of Phan Thiet in Vietnam. Goes by the name of Kelepra-Noi, although it is better known by the Umbrella Scientists who worked on it as Angel base. Angel base is a tropical island wreathed in fog, it's peaks reach high in the sky, its tips are dusted with a little snow. Down below, there is a base. Most of it is below ground, although there are concrete buildings and various animal pens scattered over the island. The pens hold animals. Just not the usual kind.  
It's a research base, just like the one underneath Raccoon City - Just much larger. Just like many Umbrella bases, it was under control - Until recently. Umbrella decided to move their business elsewhere and leave the island. They didn't tell the scientists there though. They didn't tell anyone. The T - Virus was released by an agent who was shot soon afterwards by a security guard. The virus spread, leaving in its wake another disaster in the making. Scott Franks, a scientist in his late thirties just managed to escape. Scott Franks was currently in a hotel room in Phnom Penh, talking to me.  
  
"So you see" the man said, still softly "Umbrella like to see what happens to people infected by the viruses - How they react, stuff like that. By the time any of 'em know, they're already zombies"   
"Why did they leave?" I was still questioning him - I had for nearly an hour now.  
"The animals were too dangerous. It would be safer to move their business elsewhere"  
"Why are you telling me all of this?" I finished with a question that would define the end of a conversation.  
"Because" his mucky finger jabbed me through the thin netting "You're probably the only person who can do anything about it"  
"I'm here with three others. We're here to look for the island"  
"Who are your companions?"  
"Never you mind"   
"Fair enough. Don't tell these friends of yours about me until the time is right - I don't want anybody else crawling over me" he said, and then disappeared.  
"Hey!" I said, louder than was necessary "You haven't told me enough!"  
He wouldn't reply. He merely sat there, cross-legged with a cigarette in his mouth, staring away from me.   
  
The night continued with no further interruptions. In the morning, I woke with a picture in my mind. A picture of an island.  
I got out of bed. It was going to be another hot day. Sun filtered in through the slats in the blind, and I could already feel the heat.  
I grabbed my wash-bag out of instinct, and headed, barefoot, to the door. I trod on paper. Looking down, I saw an envelope. It was an A4 envelope, stuffed full virtually to bursting point, and it was stuffed underneath my door.   
I picked it up. On the front, in thick black marker pen was written 'LEON'.  
I opened it. It contained a map of the coast - on it was a small island, marked clearly with red pen. On the back, was what looked like the map of a labyrinth and then turned out to be the map of the base - Angel base. There was also a Keycard, red and black with the Umbrella logo on the front. It also had a name and code number, and there was a label attached.  
It read 'SECURITY 1 - 001'   
There was also a piece of paper. One seemed to be a letter to me, personally, and there was a tiny book. It was a diary. It was about one hundred pages, and it was annotated with various diagrams. On the front, it read 'Scott Franks - Lead Chemical Scientist'.  
I put the book in my pocket along with the card. The rest I put back in the envelope, and folded it up as much as possible. I then stuck that in my inside pocket.  
I kept the letter out to read. I decided to go next door to thank the man, so I went out onto the landing and knocked on his door. No answer. I knocked again, louder this time. I tried the handle. It opened, and I stepped inside. The room was dark, and very messy. However, it was light enough for me to see the rope. To see the body hanging from it.  
  
  
Police, suicides and Claire  
  
  
I sat in the Police station, alongside Chris, Claire and Sherry who had been woken by the cries of the cleaner finding the body of Scott Franks. The man whom I had spoken to last night had made his last confession. He'd obviously hung himself in the early hours of the morning, soon after I'd gone to sleep.   
"This is weird" Claire said.   
"Yeah, it can't be a coincidence that this has happened on the night we stay - Could Umbrella be giving us a warning?"  
"Don't be stupid, Chris" Claire pointed out "They don't even know we're here"  
Chris turned to me.  
"Hey, Leon"  
I had been far too engrossed in my own thoughts of Scott Franks suicide to listen, but Chris roused me from my dream.  
"Mm?"  
"What do you think?"  
"I really don't know. It's difficult to tell"  
"What's difficult to tell?" Claire asked, a little suspicious.   
"I'll tell you later"  
I was called into the questioning room just then, and I was only released about half an hour later.   
The officer interrogating me had been more than a little vague, struggling with somebody who spoke English was one thing, trying to speak with them in their own language was quite another. We constantly bounced off each other, his questions were usually pointless or made no sense, and my answers were constantly avoiding the subject in hand.   
He finally let me go, mainly out of irritation.  
I went outside, and sat on a bench bordering the station wall.  
Claire came out, and sat beside me.  
"You okay?" she asked.  
"Yeah" I said.  
"Look" she said, now turning into an interrogator herself "What the hell is going on here?"  
"Pardon me?"  
"You know something I don't, is that correct?"  
"Yes"  
She stopped being harsh. She didn't want to anymore.  
"Leon...We're friends. Surely you can tell me?"   
I sighed.  
"Yeah...I wasn't going to tell the others until later, but..."  
"We'll tell them later" she said "First, you really should tell me about that guy. Did he talk to you?"  
"Yeah"  
"What did he say?"  
I then proceeded to explain our bizarre conversation nine hours earlier, and what he stuffed under my doorstep. Why did I just tell her like that?   
I knew it was because I trusted her.  
"He worked for Umbrella?" she said, it was more of a statement than a question.  
"Yeah, he worked on the island"   
"I think we got something here" she said, smiling triumphantly "We're one step towards getting there"   
"He even gave me a map" I added.  
"Really?"  
"Yeah, it's a map of the island - There's also a map on the other side showing us where the island is"  
She smiled. I loved her smile. I still do now.   
"For now this is between you and me" she said softly. I could smell her scent as she leaned close, and I was tempted for a moment to kiss her - and then I thought better of it.   
I decided to wait until later.  
'Oh what the hell' I thought.  
I made up my mind there and then.   
"Um...Claire" I drew in a breath.  
"Yes?" she said.  
"It's about me...well actually it's about you...as a matter of fact, it-"  
"Leon" she said to me calmly "What is it?"  
"It's how I feel...about you, I mean" I sounded like Hugh Grant trying to explain something to the person he loved.   
"How do you feel?"  
"I guess..." I took another breath "That I like you...a lot"  
"I like you a lot too" she said, a little confused.  
"No...I meant in the other sense" I finished, lamely. My performance in the conversation had been like that of a pathetic schoolboy, but this didn't put off Claire. She smiled, touched.  
"You mean that you..."  
"Yes...I l-"  
Chris and Sherry came out of the building at that moment, Chris looking frustrated and Sherry looking bored.  
"Those guys are useless! They couldn't question somebody if their lives depended on it!"  
"I'm so bored" Sherry complained "I've been in there for two hours doing nothing"  
"Pretty boring huh?" Claire asked her, sweetly.  
"Yeah! I mean they can't even be quick about it. One guy asked me what I had for breakfast this morning"  
"He asked me what I used in the shower" I said, backing up Sherry. You tried to keep her as happy as possible. It was like an obligation.   
"Let's head for a café..." Chris said "We deserve something to drink"  
  
The café in question turned out to be a few sheltered tables in front of a counter next to a tarmac road where hundreds of people bustled, trying to get to their own, solitary destinations. It was the rush of the morning, when everything really started moving. I stopped looking at the crowds, and turned back to the table where Sherry was noisily slurping a Cola. Chris had a beer, and was occasionally swigging from it. He also carried a cigarette between one of his fingers.   
"Not a great start to the day then" Chris said, looking up.  
"No. You're right there" I said.   
"We're here looking for an island, and we end up being witnesses in a foreign police investigation"  
"We're not actually involved though..." Claire pointed out "We can still carry on"  
"Yeah, but it's an omen. A bad one" Chris persisted.  
Claire shook her head.  
"I can't understand why you believe in that sort of stuff"   
Chris is superstitious. We don't know why. He's just got this idea that things never happen unless it's been stated, and that there's never smoke without fire. That's probably why he continued to investigate the mansion back in July.  
Chris was about to say something, but Claire beat him to it.  
"Leon has something to tell both of you"   
"I do?" I asked, temporarily thrown by the change in subject.   
"Yeah...the man and the map"  
"Oh, right" I sat up "This might not seem like the best time to say this, but I haven't been really very honest with you"  
I then told them my story: The interruption in the night, the long conversation and the envelope stuffed underneath my door in the morning.  
Chris sat there contemplating this for a moment. Then he spoke.  
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" he asked.  
"Oh, great" I said sarcastically "And then proceed to get us involved in the case even further? Great solution"  
"I meant you could have told us this before we went into the questioning room" Chris said, a trace of annoyance in his voice "Then I might not have said anything that might be of any significance to us"  
"You didn't, did you?" Claire asked, slightly panicky.  
"Of course not! Do you think I'm stupid?!" he snapped.   
"You mean you talked to that weirdo...?" Sherry asked "I wouldn't go near him if he PAID me!"   
"Alright, alright!" I said, trying to get some order to the proceedings "let's just talk about what I have found and what I haven't"  
"So what have you found?" all three of them looked at me.   
I took a breath.  
"The envelope the guy stuffed under my door this morning was stuffed with Umbrella related material. There was the map, which I told you about, a letter to me personally, a keycard and some other stuff"  
"A keycard?" Chris asked.  
"Yeah. It's an Umbrella card"  
"The guy worked for Umbrella?" Chris asked, interested.   
"Yeah"  
"What else did you find out apart from what's been going on there?"  
"Nothing. He just sat there with a joint in his mouth the whole time. Didn't get anything else out of him"  
"What's the letter say?" Claire asked.   
I pulled it out, and showed her.  
It read:  
  
Dear Leon  
  
Little as I know you, you're probably the best person to be entrusted with these things. Umbrella know me. They know where I am. They'll be coming for me soon. I'm not the man to start crusades though. Therefore, I'm giving you all you'll need to get to the island. I have Level 5 clearance, so you should be able to get pretty much everywhere in the base.  
I say farewell to you. It will be a long and arduous journey, but you will pull through.  
  
P.S Additional. On a more personal note, there are certain records there that might be of interest to you, as a person. Check them out.   
  
Scott.  
  
Claire looked up.  
"What does he mean by 'interest to you, as a person'?"  
I shrugged.  
"Haven't a clue"   
"Big of him to hand his problems over to us. Very big of him" Chris said.   
"This is it though!" Claire pointed out "This is the island we're looking for. I say we stay one more night and then leave tomorrow. We've got some serious travelling to do"  
"Serious travelling?" Sherry groaned "Not more!"  
"Sorry, sweety" Claire said, sympathetically.   
Five minutes later, Chris had paid the bill and so we decided to head back to the hotel. It was still morning, so Chris suggested we take some time to relax.   
Claire said that she wanted to talk to me privately in the evening. She whispered in my ear that 'there were some private matters we needed to talk about'   
  
That evening, I was in my room, reading. It wasn't something I usually did. My day had been pretty dull, the biggest activity I had done during the course of the long and hot afternoon was read my book .At the moment, the hero in the book was being rather steamy with the heroine. Life in books is never like real life, is it? It's easy for characters in books who don't seem to have the slightest trouble seducing a woman, and there's me - A single guy who hasn't had a girlfriend since High School. I sighed, and Claire rose in my mind. I had loved only one person before Claire - and that was Ada. Oh, Ada. You stupid, stupid girl. Why do you torture me? In the few hours we had together, we loved a whole life times worth. I had thought about my love for Claire, and torn between her and Ada. Ada died while we were in the labs, and at the time I had wondered as to why I should love Claire. It was then I had realised, that Claire cared for me. I cared for her. Our relationship developed, and I decided that Ada was gone. Nothing could change that. I couldn't grieve over her anymore, I knew. I knew that Ada would want me to be happy, and I'm happy with Claire. I was just wondering how long I could go on pretending I didn't love Claire. Claire herself had become as lovelorn as I when she told me of a man called Steven Burnside she'd met when she'd been away. She'd said that he had fallen in love with her, and that she'd felt a similar way too - but he'd died, and we had turned to each other in our grief...I'd felt jealous at first...but...   
Jesus, Leon! I thought, get a grip!   
There was a knock at the door.   
I sighed, closed my book on the page I left my bookmark, and went to the door. I opened it, and was surprised to see Claire in the door.   
"May I come in?" she asked.  
"Yeah, sure" I said, eagerly.   
She walked in, and sat on the bed. I sat down with her.  
"What did you want to talk about?" I asked her, cautiously.  
"You and I" she said, turning to face me "It's us"  
"Oh...Look, I'm sorry..."  
"What's there to be sorry about?" she asked.  
"Okay...Look, I don't mind if you don't, you know..."  
"Leon..." she edged closer "...Do you really love me?"  
The question sent my stomach into my throat. Words stuck in my throat, but something broke through. It came right from the heart.   
"Yes...I do Claire" I said quietly.  
There was a moment in which I thought Claire would say something like 'Look...Leon, we're not good together' or 'I'm sorry, but I don't feel the same way about you' but my foresight failed me.  
"Leon...Ever since we met up in Raccoon City, I wasn't sure what to think. We've only known each other a few months...But being friends isn't enough for me...Even Steve didn't draw me in as much as you..." she looked into my eyes, and pierced my soul.  
"Claire, I..." I began.  
She pressed her finger gently against my lips, and then she leaned over and kissed me. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her waist. I moved into a more comfortable position, and as we released our kiss, I buried my face in her hair and closed my eyes.   
  
I woke up a bit late. I sat up in bed, and looked at my watch on the tiny excuse for a bedside table, and checked my watch.  
Ten AM.   
Why so late? I'd never woken up any later than nine in my entire life.   
I turned, and then the events of last night came flooding back to me.  
Claire lay, sleeping soundlessly on the bed. I gently stroked her hair, and then I got up, and changed.   
Describing what I did is...personal, so I'm unsure how to describe it. If I ever have to describe anything romantic, I get embarrassed. It's as if my parents are watching or something.  
To cut a long story short, one thing had led to another, as it were.  
Happy? Good. Tough luck if you're not.   
I went to shower, and came back only to find Claire awake, rubbing her eyes.  
"Morning" I said, smiling as I sat down on the end of the bed where she lay.   
"Morning" she said, and smiled back.   
"Well...Woah...I mean..."  
"Leon..." she shook her head "There's no point saying anything. We confessed how we really felt to each other, and that's what matters"  
Then, suddenly there was another knock at the door.   
Claire quickly began to get changed, so that the person at the door didn't think I was dirty or anything.  
I nearly had a stroke when it turned out to be Sherry.   
"Hi Leon" she said "I was looking for Claire, have you seen her?"  
"Uh..." I didn't know what to say, but then Sherry stuck her head around me to see Claire getting changed.  
She giggled.   
"I told you it would happen!" she said, trying to contain her giggly laughter.   
  
Claire and I were more than a little embarrassed when we got downstairs to see Sherry and Chris at a table in the breakfast area with fixed straight expressions on their face, trying to contain their hysterics.   
Chris in particular was straining every muscle in his face trying not to crack up.   
"Hi you two. Tired?" Chris asked, nonchalantly.  
Claire glared at him.  
"We're okay thank you very much" she said, darkly.   
"Anyway..." Chris's face was suddenly sheathed in seriousness "...we've got a lot to organise today, and plenty of shopping to do"  
It took nearly a week to get hold of everything we needed, and I had felt we'd probably have wasted more time had Mr. Franks not left me his last will and testament, as it were.   
Chris explained in detail that he'd organised the shopping trip. Chris and I would go hunting for ammunition and other munitions that might come in handy, Claire and Sherry would go hunting for medicines to clear up poison stings and wounds. We knew that the base was more than likely to be infested with zombies and the suchlike, so medical supplies would be needed. We would be prepared, we had decided. While we had our own firearms, we had to have ammunition because we knew that your average zombie could soak five or six shots on their own, and if things got tough, the last thing we wanted to go wrong was something to do with an ammo shortage. When we finally met up, Chris revealed our purchases from various seedy shops downtown. Twelve ammunition clips, each containing thirty bullets, A shotgun, single barrelled and with thirty shells to go with it. Other things also included three magnums, with thirty bullets each. Chris had also decided to get five or six grenades.   
"How did you get those things?" Claire asked suspiciously.  
"It was part of a 'buy two, get one free' offer" Chris explained.  
"Sounds like a special offer in McDonalds" Sherry added.   
"So what did you get?" I asked Claire and Sherry.  
Claire smiled, and opened the bag. Inside were fifty disposable hypodermic syringes, a variation of painkillers and poison neutralisers and a few medical kits. Claire was quite adept at fixing wounds, we all knew that was true.   
Claire also revealed that she'd booked us tickets on a train to Ho Chi Minh, scheduled to leave at eight o'clock that evening.  
"Ho Chi Minh?" Chris exclaimed "We might as well have flown directly to Vietnam!"   
"Look, the island we were on was near Cambodia, right?" Claire said "I guessed that the base was somewhere off Cambodia's coast, but I was wrong. Okay?"   
We would then go straight to Phan Thiet from there, and make arrangements to hire a boat.   
"Okay" I said "let's just take it easy for the rest of the day until we have to get packing, is that okay with everybody?"   
They all nodded.   
  
  
Get out of my head   
  
  
The train was packed and hot, it was a thin train that had the smell and atmosphere of a mountain of corpses. Cambodian and Thai men and women lined corridors and overcrowded the seats, while we sat at our designated seats by a window that looked out onto the grasslands of Cambodia. The land shot past, blurring as if it was just a flurry of dark green and blackness of the dark plains. I sat by the window, Claire was to my left and Sherry was to the left of her. Chris had the aisle seat.   
I wiped my forehead. The heat was always more unbearable on Cambodian public transport, especially when you had hundreds of sweating passengers, several of whom probably didn't have tickets surrounding you. The stench of sweat was omnipresent, and it didn't make me feel better that I had to be on the train for a further six hours. I couldn't count the hours, but they dragged by slower than an international golf tournament. It was night. I checked my watch. It was about 2am, and about 2pm New York time. I couldn't sleep.   
I took a swig from my bottle. The water was warm, which did little for my dehydrated form. The train clattered along on rusty wheels that took it along the gently arcing track that would make its stop in the capital town of Ho Chi Minh   
It was another hot day. Yet the heat was only bothering me up to a point. It was my evening with Claire I was thinking about. Had she wanted to do what she did? Had I pressed her into doing something she didn't want to do? I was thinking about asking her - but what would it achieve?  
I turned to her. She was asleep, and I had to gently nudge her to wake her up.   
"Uh...Claire?"  
"Mm...What?"  
"I need to confess something"  
"What?" she said, a little irritably.  
"About last night - The night before that, I mean" I fumbled with the words. I was usually pretty good with my words, but when I had to talk about something personal, especially my love life, words stuck in my throat.   
"Look, Leon. You didn't force me to do it. We did it"   
"I just felt a little bit guilty..."  
"About what? We did what we did"  
"But your brother..."  
"Look, Chris doesn't mind. He's always said that it was time I grew up"  
"Really? I wish my parents were like that"  
"He is my brother after all. My family has always encouraged you to be like an adult as much as possible once you passed the age of eighteen"  
"Right...It's just that...Do you think you could be..."  
"Ah" she sat upright, her face was a little red "I wanted to talk to you about that"  
"What?" I asked.   
"Well..." She was a little bit hesitant "I went to see a doctor before we left. You know?"  
"Oh yeah"  
"Well it turns out that I'm-"  
There was a cough from the end of the row of seats. It was Chris, having a coughing fit.   
His eyes blinked open, and he sat up.   
"Claire?" he croaked, the typical voice of somebody who'd woken up in the morning.  
"Chris?" she responded, the subject in hand temporarily dropped.   
"You there?"  
"Where else would I be?" she said.   
"Yeah...Maybe I'm just a bit too concerned for my sister...I can't get back to sleep now, what time is it?"  
"Two in the morning"  
"Oh great..." he rolled his eyes "Anybody got a book?"  
I searched through my bag for the book I'd brought with me. I actually had two of them, the second I'd purchased at an Airport in New York before we'd left. It was one of those books that were virtual clones of Tom Clancy's works, and the author must have worked for him at some point. It was called 'Third man Standing' and it was by a man called Jake McWhiggin. I'd never heard of him, but I handed Chris the book anyway.  
"Here, try this"  
Chris took it and read the front cover.  
"Not bad. I'll have a go"  
He sat back, and began to read.   
Claire leaned over to me.  
"We'll talk about this later"  
She turned back to her pillow, and snuggled up. I watched her as she slept, and tried to settle down.  
I couldn't.   
My mind was divided between two things. Franks, and Umbrella.   
Why had he committed suicide?  
There was no reason, no motif. He hadn't seemed that depressed. He'd sat down and ignored him for the rest of the night with one of those revolting joints jammed between his lips. I went to sleep, and had woken in the morning to see Franks hanging by his neck.   
Talking with Franks seemed to me now like some sort of VIP conversation, as if it was a hallowed conversation that only I had been allowed to hear.  
  
Just for now, it wasn't zombies that endlessly plagued my dreams. It was Franks. Sitting on his bed, his neck tilted in the bizarre way that a man with no muscles in his neck would sit.  
"You know..." he said in the haze of my dream, lighting a joint "...a broken neck's painful"  
"I wouldn't know" I said, sitting on the bed in his hotel room. The room in my dream was larger than real life, the roof shot up to astronomical heights and I could barely see the roof. The floor area was normal sized, the walls were the normal distance apart but it was much higher than before.  
"Well, that's obvious" the man said, letting out a long puff of bluish smoke.  
He turned to face me, and his head lolled to the other side of his body.  
"Can't move my head much. Neck's screwed to hell"  
I nodded.  
"Are you real?" I asked him.  
He shook his head  
"Nah. I'm only a projection of what you believe to be Scott Franks from your mind, into your dreams"  
"Why?"  
"The dead stay with the living until what they want has been achieved"  
"So you're riding around in my head because there's something unfinished"  
"Right"  
"I don't want to dream about you" I said, scowling.  
The man grinned.  
"Heh. I know who YOU want to dream about, miladdo"  
"That's none of your business" I managed, just holding back my temper.  
"Claire, isn't that her? Yes, attractive girl. You two go very well together. There is something she wants to tell you"  
"Like what?" I said, darkly.  
"Oh believe me, it's important"  
"Get out of my head!" I hissed.   
"Hey, I'm not too bad. Take some time to get used to, but-"  
At that point, I tried to throttle him. How dare he invade my dreams! If he wanted to play it rough, then that's how it would be!  
Suddenly, I was back on the train. I woke with a start, and gasped for air. I looked to my left, where Claire was asleep, and Chris was still reading.  
He turned to me.  
"You okay? You sounded a bit distant"  
"Uh...I'm okay" I said, sitting up.   
"You talked weird" Chris said "You were mumbling stuff like 'get out of my head' and 'none of your business''"  
"Oh" I smiled weakly "It's nothing. Just dreams"  
"Surprised any of us sleep" Chris added.  
I looked out of the window.  
It was still dark. I had only been asleep for another hour, my watch revealed and there were a few hours worth of travel to go.   
I sighed, and looked out. I had a bad feeling that Franks wouldn't leave my dreams yet. Not at all, until he achieved what he had to achieve.  
Right, I decided, mentally gritting my teeth. If he wanted something important, then that's what he'd damned well get.  
  
I did sleep for another few hours, but only a few. Franks hung around for a little while, but he didn't say anything. I survived the night without any disturbances. When the sun was finally rising over the land, we were in Vietnam. In fact, I had barely woken up when Claire told me we were getting off in five minutes.   
I rubbed my eyes, and picked up my bags. Soon, we were all in a long bustling queue to get off the train.   
When we stepped out onto the platform, it was going to be yet another hot day. I looked up at the sign against the station.  
'HO-CHI MINH' it read.   
Claire then explained that we were to switch trains, and get to Phan Thiet by the afternoon. We bought tickets, and waited an hour for the next train going to the town to arrive, and we climbed aboard.   
The journey took a long time. The journey was dogged with breakdowns and the like, so by the time we actually got to Phan Thiet, it was sometime in the mid afternoon.   
  
It was a decent sized town, but the port it had did not deal with hiring speedboats. The chances of finding a boat seemed so absurdly remote that we wondered if we would find any means of transportation across to the island. Luckily, we found an American who was speeding his holiday there, and had a small fleet of speedboats and yachts. He was a short, fat man who was actually very pleasant. He agreed to loan us a small speedboat, on the understanding it would be back in a good condition. While we were doubtful as to whether or not things would be as straightforward as that, we said okay.  
It was a short time before sunset we finally secured use of the boat, and spent an hour getting used to the thing.   
I'm no seaman, that's why I joined the police force. That was why I wasn't looking forward to our jag across the ocean to Angel base. It was a good ninety miles away, Chris said, according to the map. At the speed the boat could travel at, we would get there in about an hour or so.   
It was Six pm by the time we decided to leave. The minimal amount of large baggage we had was stored in lockers at the railway station, and the keys were kept securely in Chris's rucksack. The boat was very responsive, its engines whirred to life, and we set out across the ocean.  
  
The boat was quite fast, it covered a lot of ground in an hour and it wasn't long before the mainland behind us became a greenish speck on the horizon. The boat could travel at a decent fifty miles an hour as it sliced through the water, and the voyage (while not being totally comfortable) was uneventful. Bronze light spilled over the gently rippling ocean and onto the boat, and from where I sat I could see the golden ball of the sun dip gently below the horizon as we sped across the ocean. Looking forwards, I saw the black clouds of night were already gathering. A wind was picking up, and judging by the tingle in the air there was going to be a heavy storm. The speedboat gently bobbed up and down, as we accelerated across the waters of the Pacific Ocean. I stood up from the bench on the side of the boat, and walked down into the tiny cockpit, where Chris steered the boat, concentrating on making sure that the craft didn't do the aquatic equivalent of the forward roll. I looked out of the front screen, where salty spray was wiped off with the windscreen wipers. I took off my sunglasses because, not being able to see anything through a windscreen that was covered in a film of water was not helped by a pair of dark glasses that darkened my view.   
"I don't want to sound like a kid on Holiday with his parents, but - Are we there yet?"  
Chris turned to me  
"Close. There's a storm coming in..." he said, tapping a small screen by the wheel "We'll feel the first effects of it as soon as it's dark"  
"Anyway we can get round it?"  
"No. It's too dangerous to take any boats out during storms, that's why they keep shipping lanes closed in this weather"  
"So we couldn't make any emergency escapes off the island?"  
"Too risky. We're basically stranded on the island for the night if the storm is as severe as I think it will be"   
"Damn" I said, looking out at the horizon "So when will we get there?"  
"Within the hour" Chris said "We should see it in about fifteen minutes"   
I leaned against the instrument panel.  
"Where's Claire and Sherry?"   
"The other side of the boat, enjoying the sea while it's still calm" Chris said.  
"Okay. I'll over and see them"  
I climbed out of the vehicle, and slid across the wet deck until I found Claire and Sherry sitting on the side. They talked, and occasionally Sherry would giggle. I walked up and sat beside them.  
"Having a good time?" I asked.  
Sherry nodded.  
"Yeah, Claire's got some really funny jokes, you should hear-"  
"I'm sure I will" I said, smiling. Looking over the ocean, it felt like a proper vacation, not like one I had in a long time. I remembered holidays abroad in the tropics with my parents, laughing and giggling as a little boy, being dangled in the swimming pool of the hotel about...fifteen or so years ago, I remembered.   
Of course, the story was different now. At the age of twenty-three, I had become a crusader against the Umbrella Corporation. I was currently taking extended leave of absence, and I had been off for a few months. I had another two months to go before the powers-that-be confirmed my move to New York, which was where Claire lived also. I could have kissed the commissioner for that decision.   
I told her that there was a storm coming in.  
She asked where from.  
I said I didn't know.  
"How long will it last?" she queried.   
"The whole night, probably. Chris said there's no chance of us getting off the island until dawn"  
"You're kidding, right? That's about ten hours we'll have to be there"  
"Ten hours?" Sherry asked, shakily.   
"Don't worry. We'll keep you well protected" I said, comforting her just as Claire would. Claire was probably better at that sort of thing, and because Claire had saved Sherry's life more than once, I knew Claire deserved that extra attention. My heart sank when I thought of subjects like this. My partner for part of the night had been Ada Wong, an agent sent to recover the G-Virus. She hadn't pulled through. The last moment I had with her was on a gantry taking me through the labs and down to the train. I held on to her as she dangled over the edge. She said it was too late. I told her to shut up, and said that she would make it. She then let go, and I watched her tumble down into the depths of the dark abyss I stood over. Since then, I became determined that the same thing shouldn't happen to Claire or Sherry.  
There was a shout from the cockpit.  
"It's the island, right ahead of us!" Chris called.  
We all ran to the front to look.  
The dying rays of the setting sun illuminated the island, giving us a good view of it. It wasn't a particularly remarkable island, it had one or two mountains, a seeming eternity of jungle that covered the islands surface and very little else I could discern yet.  
The sun was virtually below the horizon, and darkness was beginning to fall.   
I looked ahead at the task ahead of us.   
We'd get what needed to be done, and then we'd blow the whole damn thing to hell.   
  
  
The hunters become the hunted  
  
  
By the time the boat reached the island, it was getting darker. Chris said he'd wished that we could have gone the next day, but Claire said that according to the notes Franks had given me Umbrella would try to lock down all access to the island within two days or so. It would therefore be virtually impossible to go the next day, as seas were predicted to be rough.  
According to the map, there was a dock on the northern coast of the island, where Umbrella parked boats of VIP's visiting the complex. The boat shed was small, but just right for their boat. It was a wooden shed, with a minimal amount of sheltering on the top of it so that visitors didn't get damp. The rain was just beginning to spit on us as we steered the boat carefully towards the boat shed, and it slipped neatly into a berth. As I looked over the edge of the boat, I noticed almost immediately that there were no other boats. Not a yacht, not even a rowing boat was moored at the dock. If our speedboat was damaged or we had engine trouble, then we would have no substitute for an escape route. We killed the engine as we slid into dock, Claire leapt off and tied the mooring lines.   
I climbed off, and withdrew my magnum. It was mine, given to me as a very special present by my father when I joined the police force. I hadn't the chance to use it when I was in Raccoon, but after that, it stayed with me. I gripped its metal handle, felt the grip on my hands.  
The gun felt comfortable. I practised a line-up with a knothole in the wooden wall, and was satisfied that I would have been able to put a bullet through it with little trouble. I loaded my belt and pockets with magnum clips, and waited for Chris to come down. He was holding the shotgun, getting used to it. He'd already loaded his own pockets and belt with Shotgun cartridges, and looked satisfied with the results.   
"What about me?" Sherry asked, shakily.  
"You stick close to me and Leon at all times - Chris needs space to fight" Claire said.  
"Can't she stay in the boat?" Chris asked.  
"For all that time?" Claire pointed out "What if any zombies wander in? She won't have anything to protect herself, and you can hardly expect her to stay in the same place for hours and hours"  
Chris shrugged.  
"Fair enough. Shall we give her something to do then?"  
I looked at her  
"Any good at map reading?" I asked.  
"I was best in geography at it" she said.  
I gave her the map.  
"You're in charge of the map then" I smiled, trying to get some colour back on her face.   
She smiled back.  
"Thanks" she said.   
"Okay" Chris said "Let's move"  
  
The boat shed was connected to a small hut that led onto a narrow jungle path which supposedly led up to a side entrance in Building B, at least that's what Sherry said was on the map.   
As soon as we stepped through the door of the boat hut, we saw that things were not well in Angel base. The small building was concrete, about the size of a small garage, maybe a little bigger. A desk was against the wall, a few boxes and other paraphernalia that was pretty useless lined the walls also. The desk had a slender book on its surface, which was gripped in the hand of a corpse. The corpse smelled terrible. The man had obviously been dead for some time. There was a sticky layer of blood that came out from underneath him, and this covered much of the desk and his chair. Except the book. A book that the man had obviously considered so precious that it couldn't be marked or stained by anything. A book he'd given his life to protect.  
Claire gingerly used one of her semi-automatic pistols to nudge the body so that it turned over.  
Her face turned into one of total disgust.  
It wasn't so much what she saw, it was the revolting smell coming from the carcass that revolted her. What I saw scared me.   
"Claire..." I said quietly.  
"Yeah?" she replied.  
"Those are bullet holes - Not attacks from dogs, zombies or anything else"  
She turned to me.   
"And?"  
I couldn't understand why she couldn't understand the implications of this.   
"They're bullet wounds from a sub-machine gun of some kind"  
"Yes?"  
I breathed in.  
"It means that somebody else has already been here. After the 'accident', I mean"  
  
Chris and I discussed the subject as Claire went to prise the book out of the dead mans hands.  
"We can easily establish it's not a suicide..." Chris said "The weapon isn't in the vicinity, and the bullet holes couldn't have been possibly fired by the man. The trajectory's all screwed up, see?" he pointed to the body, where I noticed that this was true. He would have to be holding it directly in front of himself, spraying it upwards as he took bullets down below. This was virtually impossible.   
"Who do you think could have caused it?" I asked him.  
He shrugged.  
"Don't know. It could be any trained SWAT team to a group of Army commandos, although the latter is more improbable"  
"Any suggestions?"  
"My best guess would be an Umbrella clean-up squad, sent to finish off any survivors"  
"They obviously missed Mr. Franks out" I said, thinking about what my dreams later that night would consist of.  
"So...conceivably they could still be here" I said slowly.  
There was a long silence.  
"Conceivably" Chris said "yes, conceivably"  
"But not probably?"  
Chris shook his head.  
"No, probably not. I reckon they'd either have moved out by now or they'll have been ambushed by whatever's out there"  
I shrugged, and walked over to Claire, who had managed to get the book out of the hands of the man, and was reading.  
"Don't see what was so important that he had to defend this for" she said, turning a page "It's just a diary"  
Sherry had been pottering around, searching boxes for anything that might be of any use. She'd found nothing. She turned to Claire.  
"There's got to be something inside it" Sherry pointed out "It makes no sense that he'd save his own diary from being damaged"  
"Perhaps he's sentimental?" Chris suggested.   
Claire shook her head.  
"No, Sherry's right. There's got to be another reason he saved his own diary from damage"  
"So we're not looking for any diary entries, we're looking for something unusual"  
Claire turned another page.  
"Hey, look at this one!" she said. I looked at the page.  
  
September 30th 1998   
  
Got word from the US today that Raccoon City's been overrun. The main lab was destroyed, and we lost the only samples of G-Virus in the US. However, the remainder of the samples is locked up in the Ultra-Vault, and we're keeping them totally secret. All leave has been cancelled for two months, worse luck. Richards came to see me today, and screwed at me. He virtually bit my head off, shouting that I should never leave the Outer door open! Jesus, nobody uses it, so what's the point?!   
  
She looked up.  
"That's the day after we escaped"  
I looked at her.  
"Yes, but it's not what we're looking for"  
She turned the pages.  
"Now this is interesting" she said.  
  
November 3rd 1998  
  
The central B.O.W (BiolOgical Weapons) control team issued a warning - The T-Virus has escaped. The place is now dangerous, and I'm already packing my bags. I want to get out before the Virus spreads any further. Hopefully the B.O.W security team will get this mess under control...but if they don't, I'm gone.  
  
"So what happened after that?" I asked.  
"We'll see" she said, and turned the page.  
  
November 5th 1998  
  
They've closed all of the exits to this place! Nobody can get in or out! Half of the Security team has already become the living dead, and so have most of the other scientists in the inner labs. One of my friends, Joel, after a succession of illnesses and itching epidemics, attacked me in zombie form today. I killed him, but only out of defence. I'm sorry Joel.   
  
"So that's what happened, but what after that?"  
"The last entry" Claire said "And I think this is what we're looking for"  
She pointed to the last written page in the book. It was only halfway through the book, the rest of the pages were blank.   
  
November 7th 1998  
  
Good news! A team has been dispatched from HQ! They should be here in about two days, at least that's what the radio message read. I don't know if that's enough time. To buy myself more time, I've set the electronic locks to the outer compound, so nothing can get through. I don't think those vile zombies have the brains to work electronic locks - it's just the Hunters that worry me. They are worryingly intelligent. When they finally work out that the fences won't actually hold them for that much longer (because the doors and fences work on different supplies of power) since the generators for the fences failed yesterday, I'm dead. I might just steal a boat and get out now. Yes, I'll do that. I decided to set the door lock code to 01930 - No zombie could ever work out a numerical figure.   
I guess I'd better grab what I can and leave.   
  
Claire closed the book.  
"That's it" she said "Obviously he never got the chance to do what he wanted"   
I turned to Chris.  
"What're hunters?" I asked.  
Sherry didn't know either, she looked at Chris as well. Only Claire seemed to understand.   
Chris sighed.  
"Your worst nightmare"  
"Why?" I asked "What is there we should know?"  
He looked up, deadly serious.  
"Hunters are Umbrella creations, however unlike most of the others we've met, they're mostly genetically engineered, but using human DNA as a base"  
"What're they like?" Sherry asked.  
"Right" Claire stood up "Imagine a super strong Frog human hybrid that walks around on two feet, has muscles like melons, claws like kitchen knives, unmatched cunning and intelligence compared to other Umbrella weapons and a thick, scaly hide. It can also move at the speed of a Cheetah, and they can move very quietly. However, they've got a weakness for acid and fire"  
"Oh, good..." I said "We don't have any flamethrowers or any weapons like that, do we?"  
"No" Chris agreed.  
"Why didn't you tell us this before we left, Chris?!" I demanded.  
"Like I knew there'd be Hunters here! I thought they stopped breeding them after the Arklay research base was blown up in July - by Jill and myself I may add!" he replied, angrily.   
"Stop arguing, please" Sherry said, slightly mournfully.  
"Yes - Of course, I'm sorry" I said, calming down.   
"Okay" Claire said "So we know the perimeter door's locked - The diary says that he set the electronic locks. Presumably he didn't go outside to set the locks, that would have been too dangerous"  
"So he must have set them from here" Sherry added helpfully.  
I nodded. This wasn't the only time Sherry would be useful during the course of the night.   
"Right. So there's a hidden computer in here somewhere"  
We searched the room. My theory wasn't well supported, and we still hadn't found anything even after a thorough twenty-minute search.  
The room had a control panel that mostly operated the boat dock controls and clearance etc, and the rest was security in the docks...but nothing else.   
"How can we get through with anything crawling around out there?" Sherry asked.  
"We could run for it" Chris suggested.  
Sherry shook her head.  
"No, I don't think so"  
"You don't think so?" Chris said, raising an eyebrow.  
"No. Look, according to the map the outer compound security gate is three hundred metres from here down a narrow jungle path with jungle on either side"  
"So?" Chris said.  
"I see her point" Claire said "She means that two hundred metres is a long way in the terms we're talking. Getting through without an attack would be an impossibility, and if there are hunters out there, then you can imagine how difficult things would be"  
"So we're deep in shit then?" Chris asked.  
Claire turned to her brother sharply.  
"No swearing in front of Sherry, Chris!"  
Chris shrugged.  
"My apologies" he said, lighting a cigarette.   
There was silence.  
"Presumably we could operate the security systems locally" I said.   
"Yes, presumably, Leon" Claire said, frustrated "But not possibly"  
I turned to her.  
"If you have any better ideas then I'd be happy for you to share them with us"  
Claire was quietly angry, but then she calmed.  
"I'm sorry - I was out of order"  
"It's okay" I said "No need to apologise"   
She looked at me, and smiled. Then, she blushed and looked away.  
"What's wrong?" I asked.  
"It's....nothing...it's just that there's something I've got to tell you about the night we...um..."  
Behind me, Chris sniggered, only once but very loudly.  
"It's okay Claire" Sherry said, scowling at Chris for his slightly childish reaction to something which Claire and I found pretty sensitive.  
"Well..." she bowed her head "It's like this. I went to the doctor while we were looking for medicines. I took one of those tests"  
"Which tests?" I asked, a little suspiciously.  
"The pregnancy tests" she said quietly. I didn't know how to react to that. I felt like something had head-butted me in the stomach. I nearly staggered over, catching the look on Sherry's face. It was a face of shock, confusion and...a little bit of joy. Even though we had no answer, it was just the prospect of it. Pregnancy? I'd never expect that.   
"And?" I said, my mouth was dry, the words came out as dry pathetic seeds that made no impact. I coughed away a dry throat.  
"It turns out-" she began. She never finished. At that moment, and to our shock the door imploded. The door was smashed down, and in the doorway was framed a hideous green creature.  
A Hunter.   
Sherry shrieked as it turned its head towards her, and she clung to Claire.  
Chris loaded his shotgun from where he stood.  
"Sherry..." he said quietly "...Move behind me, now"   
Sherry looked at Claire, and Claire nodded.  
Sherry ran and hid behind a stack of boxes.   
"Leon...Claire..." he said to us "...Kill it"  
It reacted quickly. Despite the amount of time it's taken for me to describe the events since the hunter arrived, this was only a matter of seconds.   
It leapt swiftly for us, letting out a horrible, brutal shriek that sounded like scraping razors on glass. It swiped with a giant claw, narrowly missing Chris's bulletproof vest as we opened fire. Chris's shot took a chunk out of its arm, and it reeled back in pain. It turned to me and took a leap at me. Police training and my own nerves honed to perfection force me downward, and it flew straight over me.   
I heard Claire's pistols fire, only once. The shots were accurately placed, and it took the bullets straight through the head. Its brains exploded, leaving bloody streaks on the wall. It fell to the floor, and it writhed in agony for a few seconds before dying.   
We breathed out.  
"Thanks Claire" I said, relieved "Thought I was a goner there"  
"No problem" she said, shrugging.  
We stared out into the storm, the subject of Claire's test temporarily forgotten.   
"Shall we?" I said.   
Chris nodded.  
"Yes" he said.   
  
  
Breathe in, Breathe out  
  
  
It was hammering down outside, and the ground was rapidly turning into thick, squelching mud that was beginning to rapidly soak through my boots. The rain lashed through my hair, pushing it in front of my eyes. I wiped back my wet hair so that I could still see, and blinked up at the sky. It was now twilight, and thick black thunderclouds were belting out rain and flashes of lightning lit up the skies.   
I waited for Claire, she was already soaking wet, her wet hair clinging to her face. I had to shout to her above the sound of the storm.  
"Is Sherry with you?!" I shouted.  
She nodded, and she pointed to Sherry who was just behind her, looking thoroughly miserable.  
"Chris says he's going last - So he can make sure that there's no attacks from behind!" she shouted back at me. We were getting used to having to shout at each other to be able to hear ourselves speak.   
"Do we run, or walk?" I asked her, loudly.  
"Walk quickly, if we run Sherry won't be able to keep pace with us"  
I nodded, and turned to the dark path in front of me. There was plenty of dense jungle on either side. My hand grabbed the handle of my magnum again, despite the fact there were no Hunters or zombies near me. I turned back, and gave a signal. Then I began to walk.  
I brushed long green leaves aside as they got in my way. My senses were at snapping point. Any unexpected movement would set me off. I could hear Claire and Sherry behind me, repeating my movements as we moved. I looked to either side of me. The jungle, while being savaged by the storm was ominously quiet. There was no movement, apart from the swaying of the trees in the wind, which was blowing hard against me.   
It wasn't what I was hearing that worried me. It was what I wasn't hearing.  
Then, suddenly there was a crunch, as a twig snapped. I immediately turned in the direction this sound came from. I listened acutely; my brain was turned into radar. Despite the rain and wind, I could hear any noise beyond that. There was another crunch, and a soft padding sound. The sound of somebody...no, something moving slowly, yet patiently. It wasn't a zombie, I could tell by the footsteps. They were too precise, too sneaky. They also had timing, zombies just lurch.   
"Claire, I think I hear something" I said to her, just loudly enough so she could hear it. I didn't want to attract anymore attention than was absolutely necessary.  
She listened. Then she nodded at me.  
"I hear it too" she said quietly. I could barely hear what she said.   
I stood, my gun pointed into the foliage. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Concentrate. Focus.   
There was a sudden rush of air and bushes, and the Hunter who had been stalking us leapt into the air, its razor sharp claws raised in attack. With a single movement, I turned to it, and fired a single shot. The bullet smashed through one of its reptilian eyes, and straight through its head. It screamed, and it tumbled to the ground just in front of us. It twitched for a few seconds, and then it stopped moving.   
I breathed out.  
Suddenly, we heard shotgun shots behind us.  
"RUN!!" Chris yelled from a little further back.  
I turned, and obediently ran.   
My arms pumped and my legs took me forwards at an incredible pace. I crashed through the foliage, leaves smacked wetly against my face and branches clung to my clothes as I ran. I ran blindly, like a panicking sheep in the heat of a wolf attack. My boots landed heavily in thick mud, which made things no easier. When I finally felt that I couldn't run any further, a small building loomed in the semi-darkness, a large electrical fence ran for what seemed miles into the jungle from both the left and right hand sides of it. I ran to the gate, and for some reason tried the handle. It didn't open. Then I realised how stupid I was. Of course it wouldn't open, the generator was sealing the door shut.   
Claire ran up.  
"Is there any control panel?" she said, checking the door.   
I shook my head.  
"No, there's nothing"   
"I'm scared, Claire" Sherry said, clinging to Claire like glue. I was too, I realised, and so was Claire. The rain still thumped down on us, and we checked the fence for a way in. None. We looked around for Chris.  
He wasn't with us.  
"CHRIS!!!" Claire yelled in the direction from which we had come.   
There was no sound of Chris. No reply.  
I looked, and saw the small building.  
It had a door.   
"Claire, into the building!" I shouted at her, grabbing her arm.  
"CHRIS!!!" Claire yelled again, refusing to be led.  
"Claire, into the building now!!!" I shouted at her.   
I had to drag her in the end, Sherry in tow.   
I wrenched the metal handle. The door swung open, and we all bundled in. I closed the door behind me.  
I leaned against the door, panting.   
"CHRIS!" Claire shouted, and ran to the door.  
There was a responding call.  
"CLAIRE?" Chris shouted from outside. I wrenched open the door, Chris practically fell through and I slammed the door behind him.  
He lay on the ground, his chest heaving out of exhaustion, and I slid down the door, breathing heavily.  
We all sat there for a few minutes, catching our breath. We listened to the sound of the rain hammering the roof of the small building we were in.   
"I swear..." Chris said, in between breaths, "...It crawls out there"  
"Hunters?" I asked, still panting.  
He shook his head.  
"Not just Hunters, but mostly hunters"  
"What else?" Claire asked, eyes closed and breathing controlled.   
Chris licked his lips.  
"A few snakes, and creatures that have razor sharp tongues and patches of skin missing on their flesh"  
Claire, Sherry and me froze.  
He looked at us.  
"What are they?" he asked.   
"Lickers" I replied.   
"Lickers?"  
"Nasty" Claire said "But a bit stupid"   
"What a freak show we have" I said "We got Hunters, lickers and snakes - but no bona fide classic zombies"   
"We won't find any out here" Chris said "Zombies have virtually no intelligence, I don't think they could get through electronically locked doors" he thought for a second "Come to think of it, they don't have ANY intelligence"  
Now the heat was off, we had a chance to take a proper look around the room in which we had landed ourselves.  
It was like the last one, but even smaller. It was about the size of a garden shed, but it was surprisingly empty. There was a console on the other end of the wall with cables running off it to a valve box in the ceiling. We could hear the hum of electrics. There was power in this room. The monitor glowed. It was working.  
I looked to my left to see a sign affixed to the wall. It wasn't very large, but it stood out in yellow letters on a black background:  
  
POWER CONTROL SHED  
WARNING: HIGH VOLTAGE   
  
"I think we've found what we want" I said. Claire walked to the other end of the room and studied the screen.  
"This is the power configuration interface" she said.   
"Can we turn off the door locks?" I asked, walking up to her.  
She read the screen.  
"Yes, but only for a short amount of time. It temporarily turns off the locks for five minutes, emergency feature only. Full authorisation is required to turn it off permanently"  
"So we can turn off the power to the doors, but only for five minutes" Chris said.   
"Right" Claire turned to me "Can that keycard help?" I checked the card.   
"Worth a try" I said, and slid the card through a card reader at the bottom.  
Nothing happened.  
I tried again.  
Nothing, not even a beep.  
"It's not working" Claire said.  
"I think we can tell" Chris replied, a little testily.  
She turned to him.   
"What's bitten you?" she asked.  
"Pretty much every type of flying insect that has more than four legs, and one or two horrific mutants, how about that?" he replied, darkly.   
Breathe in. Breathe out.  
"It's more likely that this card only works in the buildings themselves" I said "After all, what would a chemist be doing out this far?"  
"Good point" Claire said "So it's only logical that the card is yet to be useful"   
We all looked at the monitor. It read:  
  
Power status   
  
ELECTRIC FENCES............... OFF  
ELECTRONIC DOOR LOCKS...ON   
  
WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONFIGURE THESE SETTINGS? YES\NO  
  
Claire typed in YES. The console only had a keyboard, so there was no mouse to use, making things difficult.  
There was a beep, and clicking sound. The screen was now full of options. It read:  
  
Turning on and off the electric fences requires a special password  
  
PASSWORD:.............  
  
Would you like to alter the door lock settings?  
YES\NO  
  
Do you want the system to check for power sources and generator efficiency?  
  
Would you like to Shut down?  
YES\NO  
  
Claire ignored all of them except the door lock option. She selected it, and pressed enter.  
There was a moment as the machine whirred.  
Then, only a small amount of options appeared on the screen. These new ones read:  
  
System status detects that all door locks are on.   
  
Would you like to turn off the fences permanently until activated again?   
PLEASE PUT AUTHORISATION CARD THROUGH CARD READER  
  
EMERGENCY SETTING - This turns the power to the door locks off for a total of five minutes. Would you like to activate?  
  
Claire turned to us. We all nodded.  
She turned back, and typed in YES.  
There was a beep, and a whirr. Then, the box above us clicked.  
"Right" She turned to us, slinging her backpack on again "The power to the door locks is off. We'd better get through, and then move on"  
"What about the fences?" I asked.  
"The generator to them failed, remember? That's what it said in that guy's diary"  
I nodded.  
"Okay" I said, and turned to Chris "Ready to live dangerously once again?"  
"As usual" he said. I turned to Claire, who grinned.  
  
  
We have Hostiles  
  
  
I trudged through the muddy leaf mould of the jungle. God, I hated the rainforests. I'd happily burn them down myself if it weren't for the environmental aspect. Claire walked behind me, as did Sherry. We'd slowed the pace down a notch, since we were now behind an electrical door lock there wasn't much chance of the assorted Virus creatures behind getting to us. The jungle was less intense now, and the trees were tall enough to shelter us from the gales tearing across the island.   
"Claire?" I asked as I walked, cutting up the branch of a tropical plant that stood in my path.   
"Uh-huh?" she replied, a little absentmindedly, stepping over logs and fallen branches. Obviously this part of the path hadn't been cleared up for some time.   
"About...the test" I said.  
"I'll tell you later." she said, a little irritated.  
"Fine" I replied.   
It was colder now, and my wet clothes chilled me to the bone.  
The path abruptly turned into a clearing, and across the clearing I saw a high metal fence, about twenty feet tall with barbed wire on the top. It extended across the clearing, and off into the jungle on either side.  
"Oh great" I said, throwing my arms up in despair "The path ends here at this barrier"  
"Fence" Chris corrected.  
I looked at him darkly.  
"Po-tah-toe, Po-tay-toe" I said.   
Claire walked forwards, and examined the high metal fence.  
"Looks pretty secure" she said, testing the fence. We knew the fence power was off, and so there was no need for precautions here. A large sign adorned the fence, it read:  
  
  
HUNTER COMPOUND  
WARNING: 30,000 VOLTS  
  
We followed the fence for about thirty metres, until we stopped dead in our tracks. The fence had a huge gaping hole in its centre, the thick steel bars were twisted outwards, and the hole was just big enough for a certain virus creature with razor sharp claws.  
"Oh shit..." Claire breathed.  
Base, we have hostiles I told myself.  
We were far from safe.   
"They're in here as well?" Chris asked.   
"Of course they are," Claire realised "How would they have got through to outside the outer compound?"  
"This is the hunter compound" Sherry said, reading the map.   
"Is it?"  
"Yeah, there's four other virus monster compounds"  
"And they are....?" Chris asked.  
"Uh...The Licker compound, the Cerberus compound, the Reaver compound?" she asked, wanting to know if Chris knew what it was.   
Chris shook his head.  
"Beats me"  
She turned to the map again.  
"Then there's the...Tyrant compound"   
Chris went pale.   
"Oh god..." he mumbled  
"What?"  
"They've created more than one tyrant?" he continued to mutter "No...They couldn't do that..."  
"Chris, what's a tyrant?!" Claire demanded.   
He shook his head.  
"I thought they abandoned the Tyrant project after Arklay base was blown up - and the G - Virus supplants the T - Virus so I thought they'd have stopped the research"  
"What's a tyrant, Chris?!!" Claire and I virtually yelled.   
He took a deep breath.  
"In the mansion outside Raccoon City in the Arklay mountains, we discovered the existence of the T - Virus for the first time. What we also discovered was its different effect on different types of organisms and how it mutates"  
"And...?"  
"The Tyrant was the culmination of years worth of research into controlling the mutation of the T - Virus. Zombies are creations of the original T - Virus. The Tyrant was somewhat different"  
"How?" Sherry asked.  
"Its growth was specially monitored from its gestation, every slight growth it made was checked. If there were any signs of rotting flesh or under-developing muscles, they would chemically correct the errors that made the T-Virus less of a weapon and more of a hazard to the scientists themselves. Organs and muscle tissue were enhanced tenfold, and it also became remarkable when the scientists noted the development of a two foot long set of claws on its right hand. It grew and grew, and by the time we got to it was as Wesker described it - The world's most powerful biological weapon"  
"Wesker?" my eyes narrowed "Who was he?"  
"An old friend of Chris's whom we bumped into when we were trying to stop those Ashford freaks from doing more damage than they were worth with the T-Veronica virus"  
Chris continued.  
"Wesker was a traitor and a special Umbrella agent, sent undercover into the S.T.A.R.S unit to ensure we never got close to finding out Umbrella's darkest secret. He commanded our team in the mansion, and nearly killed us all. Every step we took was into a dead end, in fact we should have suspected his covert activities the moment he reappeared in the Guest house of the mansion, having disappeared from the main hall when we arrived. We thought he was covering up, but it turned out he was leading us straight through the mansion as guinea pigs for the BOW's"  
"What part did he play with this...tyrant?" I asked.  
"Wesker?" Chris shook his head "He had no part in developing the tyrant, although we knew he worked for Umbrella. Except, ironically, he betrayed them too. He never intended to reclaim lost information for them"  
"He wanted it for himself?" Claire asked, astonished. Even she didn't know this.   
Chris nodded   
"Of course. How much do you think the government or other world powers would be willing to pay for that knowledge?"  
"A lot" Sherry pointed out.   
"Right. He never achieved it though. When he finally realised he couldn't control what it did, he uh...lost his head"  
"What does it look like, and what happened to it?" Claire asked her brother. The interrogation would finish here.  
"It's basically a nine foot tall killing machine, thick hided, remorseless and super-strong. It also has a huge set of claws, the ones I talked about"  
"So how did it bid the long so-long?" I said.  
"We destroyed it with a rocket launcher. It was practically invincible, that piece of weaponry had to be aimed directly at it heart, which was partially on the outside"  
"Jesus" Claire finished "So if they create more of those things..."  
"Yeah" Chris concluded "We can kiss our asses goodbye"  
  
We sat underneath a palm tree in silence, listening to the driving rain.   
"Where do we go from here?" Sherry asked.  
Claire shrugged.  
"I don't know, Sherry"   
I lay with my back propped against the thick trunk of the tree, and used my torch to check the map. According to the map, we were deep in the outer compound, and there were two pathways leading to the left and right.  
Left or right?  
"Which path do we follow?" I asked Claire.  
"If they're both as dangerous as I think they are, then none of them"  
"Oh"   
I sighed, and lay back.   
Despite the hunters attack, everything had been going quite well.  
"We could always go through the pen" Chris suggested.   
He was mad. Claire, Sherry and I knew now that he was madder than one of those people who walk around in subways wearing signs like 'THE ALIENS ARE COMING'.  
"Are you insane? It's a deathtrap out there!" Claire pointed out.  
"Where else are we going to go?" Chris asked "If we're going to get the evidence and information we need to finally corner Umbrella, then we're going to have to get through the pen itself. Besides, most of the creatures should have escaped, so we should encounter minimal Hunters, Lickers or dogs"   
Claire and I looked at each other.  
We sighed.   
  
The hole in the fence was quite large, and so therefore it was large enough for all of us to get through, even Chris.  
Since the pens were designed for minimal human movement, there were no pathways or human-friendly environments. This made things difficult for us to get around. We climbed over fallen trees, we waded through knee high foliage and sliced up vines as they dangled in front of us. The darkness around us made sight difficult, and we had to stay close at all times. As we pushed on through the jungle, we came across carcasses, mostly human. They were badly torn up, and there was a lingering sour odour in the air.   
Chris sniffed, and looked down by the decapitated bodies.  
"Hmm...Hunter droppings"  
"Eugh!" Sherry said, her face contorting as she smelled the unpleasant stink "You mean that those things actually...?"  
"Yep" Claire said, casually.   
We walked on, and the smell was still strong as we reached the other side of the pen about forty minutes later.  
It was about nine 'o clock at night. The rain still fell. If we spent any longer out here, hypothermia was a good possibility. Especially for Sherry, who would be more susceptible than an adult.   
As we looked beyond the fence, we saw a few low buildings that were surrounded by guard towers. Guard towers? Surely the fences would be enough to protect them.   
I looked up at the top of the fence.   
"Anybody for a climb?" I asked.  
"With those spikes?" Claire said, raising her eyebrow "I'd rather become a champion barbed wire hurdler"  
We checked out the thick bars of the fence. They were indeed very thick, and not passable by any human.   
"So are we stuck?" Sherry asked.   
I tried the fence again.   
"Yeah"  
Chris looked up at the top of the fence.  
"We could cut up the barbed wire"  
I looked at him, nodding.  
"Why not? If we gotta get through, we gotta get through"   
Chris was the first to try the fence. He climbed up quickly, his days in the USAF had trained him to be a strong athlete. Hanging from the top of the fence, he looked down.  
"Throw me those wire cutters!"  
Claire opened her rucksack, and removed a pair of strong wire cutters. Tools had been another thing we'd been forced to buy in Phnom Penh, but only just in time before the train had come.   
"Catch!" Claire shouted, and she threw them up.   
It was heavy, but Chris had no trouble with it.  
Chris caught it in one hand, and then proceeded to cut away the wire at the top.  
"Hey Leon!" he called down after about five minutes  
"Gimme a hand up here will you?!"   
"Okay!" I called back up, and assaulted the fence. I climbed it quickly. Sherry and Claire watched from down below.  
At the top, Chris winced.  
"Hanging up here's killing me - Could you take over for a while?"  
I shrugged, and took the wirecutters in one hand. Then, leaning against the fence, I managed to cut up the rest of the barbed wire with little trouble. The wire clicked as the razor sharp incisors of the cutters bit through the wire, and I waited for the end of my session with eagerness. After another five or so minutes, we'd managed to cut away an area at the top, big enough for us to climb over.   
"Stand back, I'm dropping the cutters!" I called, watching as Claire and Sherry stood back, and dropped the tools.   
Claire picked them up, and put them back in the bag.  
Claire turned to Sherry, and said that she'd have to climb over. Sherry shook her head. Claire said that the wire was gone, and that she'd be there to help her if anything went wrong. Sherry still wasn't sure, and it took about five minutes for her to say 'Okay...But please don't go ahead of me'   
  
It took us ten minutes to get everything over the other side of the fence, and we turned to the large expanse of lab buildings ahead. While it covered a large area, we'd expected the buildings to be higher.  
"It says that there are about ten levels underground, including a sewer system" Sherry said, reading the map.  
There was a main gate in front of us, it was about fifteen feet high and probably just as thick.  
"How do we-" Chris began, and suddenly there was a loud grinding noise.  
The gate was opening. It opened to reveal a huge courtyard. It was pentagonal shaped, and the ground was deliberately stamped down to allow scientists and technicians to walk around in. There were several guard towers, the Vulcan cannons hanging from their abandoned positions. Jeeps sat immobile in the tiny patch of dirt jokingly marked 'Parking Area'  
Security panels had been blasted out, and cables hung from power boxes against the walls.   
Sherry clung to Claire  
"Looks like there's been a fight here" Chris said, as usual stating the obvious.   
"I don't like this..." Sherry said, her voice quavering.   
"Don't like what?" Chris asked.   
"I don't know...it just doesn't feel right..." she said.  
I nodded. There was something bad in the air that made my neck tingle.   
"She's right...Something is wrong"  
"How do you know?" Claire said.   
At the time, I was unable to understand why they couldn't sense the rotten feel to the air.   
Then the penny dropped.  
"Corpses" I suddenly said "Why aren't there any corpses?"   
  
We stood for a short period of silence, the rain drumming on low roofs and mixing the dirt into thick slimy mud.   
"Wouldn't they be inside?" Chris said.  
"Not necessarily" Claire said, pointing at the jeeps, which had blood stains all up the side of them, and the wheels were caked with thick red mud, dirt mixed with blood. Arcs of blood were splattered against the walls, and there was a distinctive sour smell in the air.  
The yard was deserted, and apart from the sound of the rain, there were no other sounds.   
Sherry sneezed.  
"I'm getting cold" she said, shivering.   
Claire nodded.  
"She's right, we're all going to catch hypothermia if we stay out in the rain for any longer"   
We ran across the yard to one of the five sets of double doors, and Chris checked its electronic lock.  
He looked at us.  
"It's unlocked, we can go in"  
So with a deep breath, and with the collection of our regrets left outside in the rain, we plunged into the base.   
  
Knee deep  
  
Inside, the sound of the rain was muted by the thick concrete and metal roof about four floors above us as we sat inside the doorway, peering down the corridor. The power was thankfully on, and the pale white light that illuminated the corridor picked out a security desk, security machines and several doors leading off to the left and right. Each was labelled with varying Security levels, ranging from levels 1 to 5.   
Sherry, who was in charge of the map and notes explained that there were several levels of access, beginning at level one which dealt with low priority labs and recreation areas, all the way up to top priority, highly important and dangerous areas on level five.  
"Our friend Scott Franks was a level five" Chris said "That gives us   
pretty much unlimited access to the complex"  
"Unless they've invalidated his ID" Claire pointed out.  
"Would they have time? I mean-"  
There was a nasty whine from the ventilation shafts above. There was also a clicking noise, like that of a cat walking across a trashcan.  
Chris pointed his gun upwards, and we all started to walk quickly across the floor. "Move everybody there could be a-"  
The rest of his speech was lost to my ears, as the hideous form of the licker crashed down through the shaft, landing on the floor with surprising heaviness.  
For those who don't know it, a licker is a bizarre genetic cocktail of human being and the T - Virus, a variation on the original zombie virus. Lickers can move very much like spiders, but with only the four limbs. They have much of the original human skin missing, and they have large powerful claws at the ends of their strong arms and legs. They also have long razor sharp tongues, hence their name. It flicked out its long sharp tongue, and hissed like a giant snake. Things got from bad to worse when the floor tiles behind me collapsed, and I knew as the back of my boot found the empty space where the floor tiles had gone that I wouldn't be able to stay upright.   
I tumbled backwards, and fell through darkness for about three or four seconds before hitting something hard and uncomfortable. My head struck it as I landed on my back, and combined dizziness and pain pulled me down into unconsciousness.   
  
When I finally came to, I was lying at the bottom of the shaft down which I had fallen. There were silhouettes above in the pool of light above me, and as my eyesight returned it turned out to be the heads of Claire, Chris and Sherry.  
I peered at the shaft. The floor had obviously been unstable, and due to the licker landing on the ground, any rock fragments still holding up the floor had collapsed.   
Looking around, I noticed that the area around me was dimly lit, faint green light emanated from the ceiling. It was a low ceiling, shaped like a subway and ended after about thirty metres at a metal grating that covered the end of the tunnel. It smelled terrible, and from this I knew that I was in the bases sewer system.   
There was a door in the grating at the end, this being presumably how cleaners got around. There was also a metal door on a raised platform about halfway down the tunnel. Something to explore later, I thought.  
"Leon! Are you okay?!" Claire called from above.  
I looked up.   
"I'm okay! Just a bit bruised"   
"What's down there?" Claire called.  
I peered around.  
"Uh...It's the sewer"   
Looking around, I discovered that I was standing on a pile of collapsed rock from the hole above, and this pile was about two feet deep in water, with only about four feet of it above the water.  
I looked back up at Claire.  
"Nothing down here. There's a door and the usual stuff you find in sewers"  
As I spoke, I didn't hear the door open behind me, nor did I hear the footsteps in the water. Chris and Claire noticed, but too late.  
"LEON!! LOOK OUT!" Chris shouted.  
I turned, but only as something struck me extremely hard around the head, throwing me back down into darkness.  
  
My head was stinging, but as I opened my eyes, I felt that I must have been delirious, as I was looking down at water. There was a solid surface beneath my chest. I was also moving, bobbing slightly as the water ran beneath me. I then realised, my head clogged with fluff that I was being carried on a very wide shoulder. However, the combined dizziness and my stinging head forced me to slip back into sleep.  
  
I awoke again. This time, I was sitting up. My head wasn't particularly pleased with me for receiving two fantastically heavy blows to it, and the beginnings of a headache were appearing. My clothes were still a little damp, but they were drying up. I must have been unconscious for quite a while.  
I looked down at my arms. They were tied behind the chair, quite tightly. My watch read ten pm.   
"Oh man..." I groaned, and blinked. I was in a small room with a row of computers against the wall. It had now windows, but it did have a desk.   
Seated at the desk was a man. He looked middle aged, with glasses and a stony face.  
"I thought I'd find you" the man said.  
"Who the hell are you?" I asked.   
"The name's Kemmin, William Kemmin. You won't know me, but I know you, Leon Kennedy"  
"How do you know my name?"  
"I knew your father" he replied.  
I found this hard to believe.  
"My father has never left New York, I hardly think he'd know you" I said, flatly.  
"Oh yes" he said "I'm sorry, you don't know"  
"Don't know what?"  
He waved his hand.  
"We'll come to that in just a second. First of all, I suppose you're wondering why I took you and none of the others"  
"That did enter my mind" I said, bitterly.   
I was wondering why he took me and none of the others. Why just me?  
"Well for a start, there's some things I needed to clear up with you, and secondly, your friends have no interest to me"  
"No interest?" I said "You knew we were coming?!"   
He smiled.   
"Of course. It wasn't me who lured you here in the first place before you make assumptions"  
"Who was it?"  
"Umbrella, of course. They wanted you to come so they could finish you all off"  
It made sense now. The 'accidental' release of the virus - It was so that the island could become a deathtrap for us.   
"Franks was a planted spy?" I asked.  
The man looked confused for a second, and then the penny dropped.  
"Scott Franks? No, of course not. He's just a wild-eyed lunatic. Umbrella knew you'd come here anyway"   
"They did? Good for them" I said sarcastically.   
"Franks is dead, I believe?"  
"Yes - Suicide"  
The man shook his head.  
"I'd have thought you'd work it out by now"  
Realisation was dawning.   
"You mean he was murdered?"  
"Yes. Contract killing, Umbrella had that in the pipeline for months"  
"But he hanged himself!"  
"Again, Umbrella have a very effective private army. They hung him"  
It was ingenious, I had to admit. How exactly a contract assassin got into his room at night with nobody noticing was a little beyond me.  
"How was he killed with nobody noticing?"  
Kemmin shrugged.  
"They have their ways"  
There was some sort of suspicion lurking in the back of my head.  
Then, my suspicions escaped through my mouth.  
"The virus was released in the base. Pretty much everybody's a zombie. How come you're alive?"  
"I've been holed up in here with one of the Umbrella counter agents, Piotr Krushkov. He's the one who brought you to me. We've been working together like scavengers, stealing food and things to survive. Umbrella betrayed everybody here. We keep the doors locked, and Piotr isn't bad when it comes to disposing of attackers"  
"So everybody else is a zombie?"  
"Or dead, yes" he replied.  
There was a short silence.  
"Oh, how stupid of me, I was going to tell you something important"  
"What was that?" I asked.  
He told me.   
"No" I said, adamantly "That's just not true"  
"Believe me" he shot back "It's very true"  
"How could you know that, you goddamned liar"  
"I've got genetic records, birth certificates and pretty much every other piece of evidence to tell you that I am correct"   
"Where would you get hold of things like that?" I asked, angry that he could insinuate such a thing.  
"I knew him. He entrusted me with all of the evidence to keep, and show you when the time was right"  
"But...How could it be true...I wasn't told..." I said, defeated.  
I looked at me sympathetically, then he walked over and put a hand on my shoulder.  
"I know it's difficult to come to terms with"   
He walked across the room, and picked something off a desk.  
"I prepared this. It's all you need to know"  
He handed me the sheet. I read it.   
There was no avoiding it now, it was true.  
He untied my hands.  
"Let's find Piotr and move" he said "I'm sure we can find your friends"  
Still stunned by what I had read, I picked up my magnum and followed him.  
I'd never be the same again.  
  
  
CLAIRE  
  
Into the sewers  
  
This is me (Claire) writing this part. I thought that I might as well add to this and write what happened after Leon was carried off.  
We hovered above the hole as we watched Leon being carried away.  
"We've got to rescue him!" I said.   
"How?" Chris asked "He's being carried off through the sewers. It could take ages for us to find him"   
I looked darkly at him.  
"We're going to find him Chris...we need to" I finished, softly.  
I wasn't sure whether I should tell him yet. Should I tell him? I thought and I decided on the negative. Not right now, I thought.  
I looked around the room, to where the dead licker lay. A few well-placed shots had put the creature to rights, but we'd lost Leon.   
"We'll go through the sewers, at least that'll give us an idea as to where he was taken"  
Chris shrugged.   
"I guess so"  
Chris opened his backpack, and withdrew a long length of rope. Without a word he tied it to a sticking out piece of metal wire that supported the floor, and tested it for weight. He then let the rest of the rope drop down the hole so that its end touched the small rocky island that Leon had fallen on.   
He gripped the rope, and climbed down slowly, the rope swaying slightly as he shinned down.  
He made a soft touchdown on the ground, looked around and signalled to us that it was safe.   
Sherry was next to go down, but she took longer on the rope. She looked nervous, and from the shaky way she slid down the rope, I suspected she had a fear of heights.  
I dropped down last, and we looked down the tunnel. There seemed to be a dead end, but to the right there was a door. It was slightly ajar.  
"Through there" I said, pointing at it.  
Chris didn't seem to be in the mood for arguing, so we climbed up on the bank the door was mounted on, and we walked through. The next chamber was another sewer, but this current flowed faster, and seemed to go on for quite a way into the distance. In the water lay three corpses, face down. I pressed Sherry against myself, so that she wouldn't see the state the bodies were in. Chris climbed into the water.  
"It's not too strong" Chris declared "I think we can walk down here until we find a manhole or something"  
"Any clues?" I asked.  
"Uh..." Chris searched the water, and looked up "No"  
"I think we'd-" I began, but I was interrupted. The interruption was a cry of surprise from Chris, who'd suddenly found that the 'corpses' weren't as dead as we hoped they could have been.  
They were zombies.   
Moaning, the three creatures stood up. They had taken a bit of abuse from the water, which had eroded away skin and tissue, which didn't do much for their hideous looks. White eyed, the moaning zombies in blood stained security guard clothes lurched towards Chris, arms outstretched. They smelled terrible, just like the other zombies. Chris pulled out his shotgun, and fired at one. The shot passed through the first zombie's stomach, completely tearing the upper part of its body from the bottom part. The top half tumbled to the ground, but it kept coming. It took another shot to the head for it to finally die. I pulled out my automatic pistols, and unleashed a few bullets at the second one.  
The bullets thudded into its body, knocking it over by the sheer force of the blow. It twitched as it lay in the water, but Chris ignored this as he finished off the third one which was trying to chew his ankle off with a single kick to its neck. The severed head floated down the current, and the rest of the body fell limply to the ground.  
Chris looked around for more.  
"There may be more around, we'd better not stick around here" he said.   
  
  
  
We waded through ankle deep water, trying to make as little sound as possible. It was murky in the sewer, and there were rats. Rats which had obviously escaped infection. They slid past our feet, and Sherry shrieked as one slipped past her leg.  
"EEEK!" she shrieked.  
"Is it a rat?" I asked her, peering into the water.   
"Yeah...They're big rats!" she said, acting like a frightened horse as she flicked her head from side to side, trying to look for any more rats that could have escaped past her legs.   
We walked for what seemed an age, and I'll say now that if we hadn't been so bored, Chris would never have seen the clue.   
"Look!" he exclaimed, urgently pointing to our right. To the right was a ladder leading up to a manhole cover. On the edge of the ladder, there was a torn piece of material. It looked like a rag from a shirt. It looked like Leon's shirt.   
We waded over, and Chris examined it.  
"It's Leon's shirt" he said, and looked up.   
The manhole was open.  
Chris looked at me.  
"Shall we go up?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, but I nodded anyway.  
I climbed up the slimy metal rungs, and pushed the slightly open manhole cover completely open.   
I looked out, keeping mostly out of sight. It was a laboratory of some kind, it had shelves filled with mysterious books and test tubes mostly empty but some were full. Lines of small security containers lined the walls, each was labelled with its own identity number.   
We all climbed out, as the coast seemed clear. The walls were white - It was surprisingly clinical compared to the devastated Umbrella labs in Racoon City. It was obvious that no creatures, zombie or other had been in here.   
"Nobody home" Chris said.   
I looked at him.  
Chris's skill of stating the obvious was superior to all others he had, apart from marksmanship.  
Sherry juggled with one of the containers in her hands thoughtfully.   
"I wonder what's in this one" she pondered.  
I turned to her.  
"Don't touch it Sherry, it could be dangerous"  
She nodded obediently, and put it back on the shelf.  
I looked across the lab table. It was a mess, piles of sheets and broken flasks covered the table top.   
There was a single folder, crammed thick with paper, large block letters printed on its front cover.  
  
BIRKIN FILE: 011 99 77 201  
  
"Hey...That's my surname" Sherry whispered.  
I picked it up.  
I flicked through it. It was filled with family photos, genetic matches and other data.  
"It's a folder of your family, collected over the years. Fingerprints, birth certificates etcetera"  
There were three names, with labels beside them  
  
NAME: STATUS:   
  
WILLIAM BIRKIN DECEASED ( G-VIRUS INFECTION)  
ANNETTE BIRKIN DECEASED (KILLED BY WILLIAM BIRKIN)  
SHERRY BIRKIN ALIVE  
  
"Hey, there's something else beneath that" Sherry pointed to the middle of the page"  
She was right. For some reason, I hadn't noticed that. It read:  
  
????? BIRKIN ALIVE  
  
I turned to Sherry.  
"You have a brother?" I asked.  
Sherry shook her head.  
"No, I'm an only child" she said, and thought for a moment "Well...my parents told me that I did have a brother, but he died after he was born"   
"How did you cope with it?" I asked, softly.  
Sherry shrugged.  
"I'd never met him, he died eleven years before I was born...So it just seemed weird, not sad because I had a ghost brother whom I'd never met"  
"Have you given him a name?"  
Sherry shook her head.  
"No...He's just a ghost friend to me"  
"According to this he is still alive" Chris pointed out, jabbing his finger at the folder.   
"Why would Umbrella be interested in me?" Sherry asked.  
"I don't think it's you they're after, Sherry" I said "I think it may be this mystery brother of yours that they're after"  
The soft light of the light tube on the ceiling made me feel a little dizzy, so I went into a door adjoining the lab. It was a small office, with a chair, a desk and no windows. The door was smashed, and bullet holes laced the wood. I heard a familiar moan just outside. I pulled my automatic pistols out and edged along the wall. The moaning was there for a second, and then it faded. I was beside the door now, and I peered through the bullet holes in the door.  
Nothing there.  
Suddenly, a pair of hands with skin like wrinkled grey paper smashed through the door, and clasped themselves around my throat.  
I gagged for air.  
"Help!" I gasped, loud enough for the other two to hear it.  
Chris ran through to see me wrestling with the two hands. The hands gripped like a vice, and my eyes had coloured spots appearing on them as I struggled.   
Chris looked at me, comically.  
"Need some help?" he asked.  
"Hysterical, I'm sure" I wheezed.   
Chris loaded his shotgun, and put a shot through the door.   
There was a squelching sound, and the hands relaxed their grip, falling back through the door. The door now looked like a lump of Swiss cheese, there were so many holes in it, it could have been used as a colander.   
We looked through the doorway. A zombie with a vast hole in its chest lay on its back, twitching on the floor.  
I massaged my throat, still panting.   
"Anything in this room of any interest?" Chris asked.   
I shook my head, still unable to get all my breath back.  
Sherry tried the handle of the 'door'.   
"Can it open? I mean, there's not much left of this door exactly"   
Chris gave her an old fashioned look, and pushed open the door.   
The corridor was long and bleak, just like any other corridor in the base. We stepped into the corridor, which was only faintly light by emergency lighting.  
From down the other end of the corridor came a moan. We turned. More zombies. Chris took aim, and fired once. Twice. Three times.  
I made a quick headcount, and guessed that there were six or seven zombies, all ex-researchers by the look of their disintegrating clothing.   
Blood sprayed against my jacket as Chris fired, red drops slid down my priceless 'Made in Heaven' jacket that I always wore.  
Feeling suddenly annoyed that these zombies had bled on my clothing, I pulled out my own pistols and fired. Sherry clung to me as the zombies approached, and one was nearly in distance to give me an unwanted massage around the neck before biting my jugular. It lunged at me, and nearly got me. One of my bullets thudded through its brain, and it slumped down in front of me.  
"Don't mess with me" I hissed at its corpse.  
We stood there for a whole minute, looking around us.  
"Looks like the power's out" said Chris.  
There was a corridor that branched off to our right, Sherry said that it was one of the main labs.  
"This could give us an opportunity to find the evidence we need!" exclaimed Chris.  
I glared at him.  
"At the moment, this is a search and rescue mission Chris, we can worry about evidence later" I told him.  
He was just about to spit a remark back at me, when we heard a gunshot. It came from a short way off, and seemed to come through the lab doors.  
Chris looked at me.  
"Seems like we've found him" he said.  
  
We barged through the doors, to find a mostly undisturbed laboratory. It was cluttered with eight-foot high glass incubators, three out of six of which were empty. The other three had creatures that I had never seen before. They were large and black, with various spiky pieces of armoured skin that protruded from its elbows, hands and legs. It was built like a tank, which its armoured carapace reflected. Their faces were the stuff of nightmares, evil faces that reminded me of lizard heads, but with immense fangs.  
Thankfully, all three of them were asleep.   
"What're they?" Sherry asked, a look of fear and awe on her face.  
"Those Reaver things, I think" Chris said, looking at them.  
Computers and consoles lined the walls of this immense laboratory, and various other walk in freezers with labels such as 'WARNING: CRYOGENIC STORAGE. EXTREME COLD' stamped in large red print on the front of the metal doors.   
"That's where they keep the embryos, I think" I said to Chris.  
He nodded.  
"That's good evidence, but a bit extreme. Could you imagine taking one of those things back? All hell'll break loose"  
"What if we killed one of them, and returned it in a freezer container?" I suggested.  
"Good idea, I think-"  
There were shouts outside, and then suddenly the figure of Leon came flying through a glass screen at the end of the room that we hadn't been paying any attention to, and he crumpled up on the floor, rolling around in pain.  
We ran over to him. He was conscious, and didn't seem to be severely injured, but he did look as if he'd been cut by his brief journey through the glass.  
He lay there for a second, and his eyes opened.  
"Wha..? Oh god, Claire!" he hugged me, and I hugged him back.   
"Are you okay Leon?" Chris asked.  
Leon turned to Chris.  
"I'm okay, Chris. We need your help, though"  
"WE?" I asked him, incredulously.  
"Two other guys I've met up with - We've found one of the tyrants"  
"A tyrant?!" Chris asked, shocked.  
"Yeah" Leon nodded "There's only two of them in the base, but one's bad enough. We're through here"   
He turned, and was just about to leave, when he turned.  
"Is Sherry with you?"  
"I'm here" she said, puzzled by his sudden concern.  
We were even more surprised, when he hugged her, practically squeezing the life out of her.  
"Sherry...It's good you're alive.." he said, grinning like a maniac.  
"It's...good to see you too Leon" Sherry responded, almost bowled over by this show of immense affection "What's gotten into you?"  
Leon let go of her.  
"Sorry...We've got stuff to talk about...But we'll talk later, first.." he thumbed behind him "We got stuff to deal with"  
  
The room was filled with bangs and the shouts of men as we ran through. In this huge metal hall was some equipment that was badly damaged, a man dressed entirely in black with a sub machine gun, firing manically at- well, it had to be a creature from Umbrella, because nothing in nature grows twelve foot tall on two legs with a clawed hand about the length and sharpness of a samurai sword.  
It looked incredibly muscled, it moved strongly and its face was the embodiment of evil, sharp teeth and white eyes announced it to be the tyrant.   
It turned to us, practically ignoring the fact that a man was hammering bullets into it, and snarled at us. The enemy.  
"Sherry..." I said, the tyrant moving threateningly towards us, and as it approached I gave Sherry the only instructions she needed to hear.  
"RUN!!!"  
  
Showdown at the OK Corral  
  
The thing charged at us, with little encouragement we dived out of the way, its spiked hand smashing the metal wall, the metal denting inwards with astonishing force.   
I landed heavily, and I looked up in time to see the Tyrant, ready with its clawed foot to kick. I rolled over as the huge foot met with the ground, the staggering impact knocked me off my feet as I clambered up, only to be thrown down again. I rolled across the floor, and got up. I stumbled across the floor, only to be grabbed by Chris as a huge clawed hand sliced directly through the air where I had been.   
"Be careful Claire! You've only got one life!" Chris warned me, like a father warning his son.  
"I got more than that Chris" I said, and we jumped behind a pile of crates.   
Leon was across the room, taking pot shots at it with his magnum.  
The Tyrant turned to attack Leon, turning its head to turn an evil mask at its attacker. It jumped at him, but Leon was quick on his feet and he slid between the legs of the Tyrant as it jumped, confusing the immense creature, who only saw Leon again as he jumped towards us. There was another spray of gunfire, this time from the man in black whose name I didn't know, but he too had to jump to safety just as the Tyrant lurched at him.  
Leon turned to the wall  
"Kemmin?"   
A man emerged from the shadows, looking around to see if anything wanted to kill him.   
"This weapons are useless against that thing" Chris said, looking to see if the Tyrant was attacking us again, which it wasn't, thankfully "We might as well be flinging peas at a battleship"  
"Are there any weapons around here?" he asked, still not introducing us to the man.  
The scientist, whose name-tag declared him to be WILLIAM KEMMIN, HEAD RESEARCH SCIENTIST nodded.  
"Yes, it's in a weapons cupboard on that opposite side of the room"   
He pointed to a door on the other side of the room.   
"Shall we stay or shall we go?" Chris said. The sound of the Tyrant bounding towards us finished the sentence. We all ran towards the door, and Chris wrenched the door handle. It didn't open.   
"Shit!" Chris cursed, and we scattered as the Tyrant jumped again.  
I felt around in my pocket for a clip, but instead I felt the access card. I was looking after it. I looked to the door, and saw there was a card reader beside it.  
"Chris! The card!" I waved the card at Chris from across the room. Chris looked at me, and nodded.  
"Open the door!" he yelled.  
I ran toward the door, and slid the card through the slot. To my utmost relief, there was a loud beep. I pulled down the handle, and pushed open the door. I jumped through.   
"CHRIS! LEON! SHERRY!" I called.  
Sherry was the first one in, Leon second and Chris third. Finally, the other two men whom I didn't really know threw themselves through the thick metal door and we slammed it shut. The room was small, it was about the size of a stock cupboard, but there was enough room for us all to sit down.   
After a brief two minutes or barricading, we sat there, breathless, listening to the banging of the Tyrant, who was obviously mystified as to where his adversaries had gone. We didn't care. We were safe for the time being.   
"Talk about Showdown at the OK Corral" Chris said after a minute or so of silence.  
I got up and inspected the shelves. They were loaded with weaponry, including an immense Gatling gun and a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Chris took the Gatling gun, and tested it for weight. He grinned, in the manner of a boy who has found the toy of his dreams in a toyshop.  
Various weapons were taken, and tested for weight by our assorted company, apart from the researcher who sat against the wall, holding his knees to his body and rocking gently.  
"Shall we go out and get rid of it?" Leon asked.  
The general census was a yes, so we all prepared to leave again.  
"Already?" Sherry asked, worried "Why now?"  
"Because if it's gone it won't cause anymore trouble" I said to her, softly "so stay here, sweety"  
She nodded, and sat in the corner.   
We had to remove the barricade first, and the Umbrella soldier whose name I STILL didn't know, kicked open the door and we spilled into the room.   
The Tyrant had been looking around at its surroundings. Judging by an immense gash in the wall, that was where it had come from.  
It turned its evil eyes to look at us.  
Chris levelled the gun.  
"Hi there, remember me?" Chris said, in true James-Bond style.  
The gun fired endlessly, the bullets thudded into the Tyrant at a huge rate, and it reeled back.  
Leon looked at the rocket launcher, and his face said it all.  
"This goddamned thing is broken!" he cursed.   
"Why?" I asked.  
"It just is!" Leon thumped it, and looked at one of the rockets. Then he looked at me.  
I immediately knew what he had in mind.  
"No, Leon! NO!" I snapped.   
"It's not going to be destroyed unless we use a rocket" he picked up a rocket, and prepared to run.  
"LEON!" I cried, but it was too late for me to argue. Leon took a running jump, and his high jump managed to take him three feet up so that he clung to part of its leg. He then proceeded to climb up its angry form.  
The tyrant didn't seem to notice the presence of Leon on its back, for that was where he was at that point, and when it did, it became angry. It started to try and shake Leon off, but by that time, Leon's plan was nearly carried out. It took about five or six shots with his magnum to produce a hole large enough for the rocket, and he took the rocket, thumped its end against the tyrant's hard back, and stuffed it in the hole.   
The tyrants arm grabbed Leon, and Leon was tossed like a rag doll across the room, landing hard on the floor in the corner. Chris dropped the Gatling gun that wasn't helping any longer, and dropped to the floor.  
As we all turned away from the creature, there was a deafening explosion. I turned to see bits of the Tyrants body fly away in different directions, slivers of ragged flesh flew away and hit the walls at speed.   
We all sat as we saw the remains of the tyrants corpse fall to the floor.   
There were no celebrations, we all ran over to Leon, who was still lying where he had fallen.  
"He's unconscious" Chris said, we'd better get him to some kind of infirmary"  
"There's one a short way away, I can lead you to it" Kemmin said, standing up.  
"First, we'll get Sherry" I said, glaring at the man.  
  
We sat in the white infirmary, looking at Leon as he lay on the bed. The infirmary was small, but stocked to the gills with medical equipment. There was a small operating theatre, and cupboards of medicines, antiseptics, serums and other things. There were also scalpels and other medical equipment in draws, accompanied by bandages and the like. There was a recovery bed, on which Leon lay unconscious  
"Do you think he'll be okay?" I asked.  
"Yeah, it's just unconsciousness" Chris said.  
Chris turned to the scientist.  
"Who the hell are you?" he asked suspiciously.  
The man slid down off the table that he was seated on, and spoke slowly but precisely.  
"Allow me to introduce myself" he said "I'm Dr. William Kemmin, I worked here until the accident"  
"You're with Umbrella?" Chris asked.  
"You're Chris Redfield. I understand that Umbrella are desperate to get you out of their faces. You're quite a group of targets"  
"Why did you take Leon?" I growled at him.  
"Somebody had to tell him" Kemmin said, casually.  
"Tell him what?"  
"That's what he asked me. It's something about Leon. The greatest secret of his life"  
"How the hell would you know anything about him?" Chris asked, remaining stern.  
"Maybe it's time he knew" Kemmin said, almost angrily "and I'm sure you'll find out too when he decides to tell you"  
"Tell US WHAT?!" I nearly screamed at him.  
"Like I said, YOU'LL FIND OUT!" Kemmin snapped back.  
Chris pulled out his pistol, and pointed it at Kemmin's head.   
"Don't speak to my sister like that, got it?" Chris threatened.  
He nodded.  
At that moment, there was a groan.  
Leon was waking up.   
I walked over to him as his eyes flickered open.  
"How do you feel?" I asked.  
"Bruised, but nothing more" he croaked, and he sat up. Slowly, but with dignity.  
He looked around.  
"Where's Sherry?"   
Sherry had been pottering across the lab, looking through boxes and other containers.  
Sherry looked up.  
"I'm here"   
"Come over here, Sherry" Leon said, gesturing for her to come over.  
She obediently walked over, and sat beside Leon.  
Leon put his hands on her shoulders.  
"How many times have I ever lied to you?" he asked her.  
Sherry thought, but only for a second.  
"Never" she said.  
"So you'll believe what I have to say now?" he asked.  
She nodded, a little puzzled.  
"Right. It's a long story"  
"It's okay, we've got time" I said.  
He took a breath.  
"It was said in a book that the greatest mystery of life is who we are"  
"The Man in the Iron Mask" I said.  
Leon nodded.  
"That is a secret which I did not learn until about an hour ago. Even then I had trouble believing it, but I was shown genetic evidence of this"   
"What?" she said.  
"Do you have any living relatives?" Leon asked.  
It was a delicate question, but Sherry answered truthfully.  
"None I know, my mom told me I had a brother, but he died years ago"   
"No. That's not true. He isn't dead. He is still alive"  
"He is?" Sherry said, a little startled.  
"Yes. The story begins twenty-four years ago"  
Another pause.  
"Your parents..." Leon began "...Were still at high school. It was the seventies, your parents had completed their studies, and celebrated at a party one night in the summer of 1975. That night they had a fling"  
"A fling?" Sherry asked.  
"Right. A fling, which produced a child"  
"A child?" Chris said, interested. This was certainly getting interesting.   
"Yes" Leon was sounding agitated by the constant repetition of his speech, but he carried on "Your parents talked about the problem. They felt that a child at this stage in their lives would distract too much of their time from trying to get a job and settling down. It was basically causing problems"  
"So what did they do?" Sherry asked, entranced.   
"They decided to give it away after birth, giving it away to a friend of William Birkin whom he'd known out of school, and had a prominent job at a growing pharmacy group. The boy was born, and your father immediately handed the boy over to his friend, who brought him up ever since"  
"Do you know where he is?" Sherry asked.  
"Yes, I do" Leon said solemnly.   
Sherry looked at Leon.  
"He's alive? Can we find him?" Sherry asked, eagerly.  
"We could find him" Chris conceded "Leon would have to tell us where he was now"   
Leon looked up. He looked like he'd been having a long debate with himself.  
"The child was born in 1975. By now he'd be twenty-three or twenty-four"  
"What is it you're not telling me Leon?!" Sherry demanded.   
Leon took a deep breath.  
"The name of the man whom the baby was given to was Dr. Scott Kennedy"   
I was the first person to realise the implications of this. No. It wasn't possible. Jesus Christ.  
"Oh god..." I muttered.  
"Who's he?" Sherry asked.  
Leon exhaled again.  
"My father"  
The news hit Sherry like some sort of tidal wave, her face creased into a face of total shock.  
"That would mean..."  
"I'm an only child, Sherry"  
She shook her head.  
"No...I...it can't be true..."   
"Yes" Leon nodded "It's true"  
"What's true?" Chris asked.  
Leon closed his eyes.  
"I'm her brother" he said.  
Chris looked like a fish at feeding time, I myself couldn't believe this either.  
Leon looked at Sherry.  
"I'm your missing brother Sherry. The brother you never had"  
Sherry's eyes were glinting with tears, her mouth was slightly open. Her lip trembled.  
Leon couldn't face it himself.  
"We've got genetic evidence - I didn't believe it until my blood sample was compared with that of my real father - William Birkin - and it came out as a near perfect match"   
Sherry looked at Leon for a few seconds, brother and sister exchanging glances for just a moment before she hugged him, burying her face in his chest (they were sitting down).   
I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder, she was shaking.   
"Sherry?" I asked, softly.  
She turned to me, face red and soaked.  
"I'm...okay..." she croaked.  
"Sherry and I need to talk...Just for a few minutes" Leon said, still quite gently.  
I nodded, and walked to Chris, stunned by the news.  
"Unbelievable" Chris said, shaking his head "Totally unbelievable"  
"Who would've thought it? They're siblings" I said.  
"Well at least it's something good" Chris pointed out "Brother and sister reunited"  
"At least Sherry's got somebody else to look up to - Somebody who's family, I mean"  
My heart sank. I knew I'd have to tell Chris and Leon and some point, I just didn't know when.  
"Chris..." I said slowly "I've got something to tell you and Leon..."  
  
LEON  
  
Apocrypha  
  
The infirmary had a side office where the medical administrator supposedly sat, and it was here I sat on my own, staring blankly at the wall.  
There wasn't much I could do, now.  
I'd told Sherry my truth. That was what was most important.  
Sherry was MY sister.  
In my mind was a feeling of joy, sadness and betrayal.   
How could my father have done that? In all the years he'd brought me up, he didn't say a word. Now it turned out that my father spent his last couple of hours as a merciless killing machine with mandibles and a vicious looking clawed hand. Did Annette Birkin - my mother - know? No, she couldn't have. She was killed by her husband when he was the psychopathic G-Virus monster - She obviously wouldn't be able to tell that I was her missing child. I met my mother once. In fact, she even shot me. Accidentally of course, but later on she threatened to kill me. If she'd known who I really was, would she have shown any empathy? At all? Maybe Ada wouldn't have died...She'd still be alive...  
I shook my head.  
No. Ada would have run off with the G-Virus to complete her mission. Would she? She'd changed so much over the time I'd known her...She'd started off holier-than-thou and selfish...and finished off kind and loving. She'd died in my arms, having whispered that she loved me. I'd felt guilty about loving Claire too, because I felt like I was betraying Ada...but the way Ada talked to me in those last minutes indicated her wish for me to carry on and love somebody else.   
I tried not to think about her, and pushed her image away.   
I thought about my new position with Sherry. I had to look after her now, after all she was my little sister and I now had a responsibility to keep her alive...Yet I suspected Umbrella knew that I was her older brother, and I was also a prime target - Wipe out any survivors of the Birkin family. I knew that we had to get off the island now, with or without the information we needed.   
Then I remembered.  
Franks. Scott Franks. He was still lounging around in the back of my head. I felt like he was watching what I was watching like a cinemagoer, eating popcorn while he watched the world through my eyes.  
I snarled.  
Right Franks, I said, if you're not leaving my head voluntarily then I'm going to force you out...GOT IT?!!  
I turned as I heard a noise. It was Claire, coming in to sit beside me.  
"Hi Leon" she said, sitting down.  
"How's Sherry?" I asked.  
Claire shrugged.  
"So-so. She's a bit shattered, so I'd go and talk to her about it if I was you"  
"Right" I was about to stand up, when Claire grabbed my arm.  
"Leon...First I need to tell you something"  
I looked at her, and sat back down. I'd had my fair share of revelations for the day, and I wasn't about to get away from them.  
"What is it?" I asked.  
"Leon...That night we spent together...it had some unexpected results"  
I suddenly remembered her telling me about her pregnancy test several hours earlier. My heart was in my mouth.   
"Mmm?" was all I managed.  
Claire breathed.  
"I'm pregnant Leon...with twins...and you're the father"   
For a moment, I was confused. Pregnancy? Claire? It seemed strange. I then realised that I would probably have to deal with being a father. A father?! God! The full implication of it hit me.   
"Jeez...I mean...oh my...it's just...I don't believe it" was all I managed.  
Claire looked at me.  
"I guess that it's a pretty big shock...I tried to wait for a happier time, but since that won't be for quite a while yet...I guess I decided it would be better if I said it sooner rather than later"  
I nodded. All I could do was be silent. Then I reached out and embraced her tightly. We held each other like that for a good five minutes, until we pulled away.   
"We've got to get out of here" I said.  
"Off the island?"  
"Yes. As quickly as possible. I can't endanger yours or the babies lives...Or Sherry"  
"Why would you be endangering our lives? We decided to come here as a group, I made a decision as did Sherry"  
Claire was missing the point.  
"No" I said shaking my head "That's not the point. Now that my true father has been revealed, Sherry and I will be obvious targets for Umbrella...and this island was the perfect trap"  
"A trap?" Claire asked.  
The idea had been bouncing around in my head for a while now.   
"Yes. The first piece of evidence begins with the diary we found. It's obvious that Umbrella is after you because of the damage you caused with the destruction of the Ashfords and their dear T-Veronica virus. The day after we escaped from Raccoon is the beginning of the events that led to the 'accident' here a while ago. They obviously started this plan to lure us here before they knew of your presence in Paris - and when they found out that I was the missing son of William Birkin, they earmarked me as a target, which probably explained Scott Franks behaviour toward me"  
I could remember it now. The night in the hotel. Franks looked at me oddly when I told him my name. I remembered the look of shock that passed over his face temporarily like a freak shower in the desert. He knew, I realised, suddenly bursting with anger. He knew all the time!! That's the reason he's hanging around in my head - he wanted me to find out. Whatever revenge he wants against Umbrella he wants later, he mainly wanted me to find the truth.  
"We're going to have to leave then. You and Sherry are the real targets of Umbrella - No blood relatives of the Birkins are allowed to remain alive, according to the sheets we read when we were still looking for you"  
I turned to her.  
"Let's get out of here"  
Kemmin walked in, looking solemn.  
"What's going on, Kemmin?" I asked him.  
"I'm afraid escaping is gong to be harder than we thought" he said.  
"Why?" Claire asked.  
"This transmission was intercepted on the Umbrella communications tower a few minutes ago, it came through the fax machine in the medical room"  
He handed it to me.  
I read it.  
  
UMBRELLA COMMUNIQUE  
  
From: Dr. Alice Weir  
To: All Level 5 Umbrella staff  
  
The trap has been sprung. Please observe directive 50 and deploy the Nemesis II onto the island immediately. Designated targets: LEON S. KENNEDY (BIRKIN) and SHERRY BIRKIN.   
  
I looked up.  
"Holy shit" I said.  
He nodded.  
"If you want to know, the Nemesis is a super strong killing assassin - whose other counterpart failed in its mission to destroy the S.T.A.R.S team. This creature has every intention of getting rid of you and the girl - And believe me, the creature is not to be underestimated"  
"Therefore we get the hell out of here" Claire asked  
I turned to Claire.   
"It's decided, we get out of here" I said.  
"If you want to escape from the Nemesis sent to kill you, then good luck. However, it's probably already here"  
We looked at him.   
"Already here?" Claire asked.  
"Yes. It'll be searching for you now"  
I looked at Claire, and she looked at me. Time to get the hell out of there.  
Chris walked in.  
"Sherry's asking for you, Leon" he said, pointing the direction with his thumb.  
I walked out, to see Sherry seated on the medical bench. I sat down beside her, and put my arm over her shoulders.  
"You okay?" I asked her softly.  
She nodded.  
"Yeah... Just a bit shattered, that's all" she said hoarsely.  
I could understand.  
"I guess it's pretty difficult for you right now" I said.  
"No more than it can be for you, I guess" she said.   
She shook her head.  
"Why didn't they tell me?" she said, quietly.  
"Perhaps they didn't want to upset you" I pointed out.  
"Well its too late now - They have done" she said, without a trace of anger.  
"My parents didn't tell me either - It just seems strange that things have turned out the way they have"   
She looked at me.  
"We only met by accident, I never even knew you before September"   
I shrugged.  
"That doesn't matter. What does matter is us getting out of here, right now"   
She nodded. Then, I was very surprised to feel her bury her face in my chest and hug me hard.  
"I can't believe it - I've found my brother" she said quietly, weeping fresh tears.  
"And I've found my sister" I said quietly, tears pricking at my eyes but not coming out.  
It was one of the most emotional moments in my life - It was a truly wonderful moment that holds my mind captive.  
I looked up. It was time to try and escape.   
  
Evac! Evac!  
  
I walked over to where Chris stood. It was about an hour later, and we were finally prepared. Chris had his shotgun fully loaded, plenty of ammo for it and an Uzi too - I had my magnum, an Uzi which I had hanging from my shoulder on a strap and, just like Chris - ammo.   
Claire was also fully equipped, and with an assault rifle slung over her shoulder.  
"Ready?" I said.  
Chris nodded.  
"Sure am"  
Kemmin smiled.  
"Good. I'll just get my-"  
I gave him a hard look, and grabbed him by the shirt.  
"Get your what? You're not under the misguided impression that you're coming WITH us are you?" I said, sternly.   
"Y-you're leaving me here?" he said, trembling.  
"Sure are!" Claire chimed in.   
He crossed his arms.  
"You'll need me"  
"Oh really? So far you've practically shattered mine and Sherry's lives - I think that's as much as I'm going to let you get away with"  
I pushed him back. Piotr stood behind him, not smiling.  
"Piotr!" Kemmin ordered "Get them!"  
Piotr did not move.  
"Well?!" Kemmin demanded.  
Piotr pushed the astonished doctor out of his way.  
"I'm leaving" Piotr said "On my own - And none of you are going to try and follow me, right?"  
We nodded.  
"We can't stop you" Chris pointed out.  
That was the last time I ever saw Piotr. He walked out of the room there and then. While we know he didn't survive, as we found his body slumped over at the foot of the volcano with enough Hunter wounds to turn him in to a piece of Swiss cheese.   
None of us cared though. We knew it was time to get out.  
Sherry said that according to the map, there was another passage that led out onto the slopes of a Volcano - and access to the sea could be gained directly from there.   
The passage in question was nearly a mile long and zombie infested. It wasn't a straight run either. It took various turns, and other tunnels led off in other directions that would take you to your death, most likely. Parts of it were flooded, and it was very dangerous. However, all four of us knew that the key to survival was through that passage, since going back the way we had come was probably close to suicidal.   
"You sure you can handle it, Sherry?" Chris asked.  
She shrugged.  
"I've done worse things" she gave Claire a wan smile "As well you know"   
Claire grinned.  
  
  
  
"Too true, too true"   
The door was down a corridor that led towards a large metal door. The door in question was our escape. Our last chance for an escape.   
I tried the handle.  
"Hmm...Locked" I said.   
Chris pulled out his shotgun, and took aim at the lock. After a loud gunshot, I tried the handle again. It swung in a little way.   
"Who needs a lockpick kit?" Chris said out loud, beginning to wander off down into the dark tunnel.   
Claire and I exchanged looks, and followed him, Sherry tagging along.  
The tunnel was a huge metal mess that was damp under foot, and dampness dripped from the walls, landing on our heads like rain. As we walked in silence, we could hear the squelching sounds as we trod on the damp floor where fungi had started to grow.   
"I still can't believe I'm a dad you know" I said to Claire.  
"I can't believe I'm going to be a mother" she replied.  
"Hey! I'm twelve and I'm going to be an aunt!" Sherry said, suddenly realising the truth.   
We laughed as we walked, somehow in higher spirits than before - perhaps confident of absolute success in escaping. I was kept going by the prospect of seeing my two children alive, of being with Claire forever, and with my sister - Sherry.   
Things appeared to be going well. But, in a badly organised universe, nothing goes well for very long...and right now, this was the case.   
The problem was no immediately obvious. It was just as well we were silent or we may not have heard it.   
"Hey...what was that?" Sherry said suddenly, her head twitching to her left.  
"What was what?" Chris asked.  
"That sound...like the kind you hear at the seaside..." Sherry muttered.  
Claire and I exchanged looks.  
"The seaside...?" Claire said; it wasn't a question.   
Then we all heard it. A low rumbling sound. It did indeed sound like it belonged at a seaside, but quite where we didn't know. Now the sound was increasing in volume and intensity, and it wasn't until it got close we realised what it was.  
"Oh sh-" Chris began, and then we were hit full in the face with a nine foot wall of water thundering down the tunnel at about twenty-five miles an hour. It took me by surprise, my world was suddenly turned upside down and I was lifted off my feet as I was tossed around like a rag doll in a world of water. In my blank mind, Franks approached me, smiling in his horrible, broken neck way.  
"Hey, you know about that girl Claire now? Two beautiful bouncing babies coming your way...I wish you well..."  
"Franks, you..." I began.  
He interrupted me, holding his hands up in a gesture of interruption.   
"I'd wake up if I was you Leon...You're going to drown if you don't..."  
At that moment, I was awake again. Water surrounded me, but I could feel its force on me. I swam upwards, and hit the surface of the powerful wave, seeing that it was still moving...but I couldn't see the others. Sherry. Claire. SHERRY!  
I swam downwards, trying to find her. Just a glimpse of her foot, anything. I was desperate not to lose her. Claire too. She had two of my children inside her. DAMN! What a dilemma. Then, my hand clasped onto something small and fleshy. It was a leg It was Sherry, unconscious. I grabbed her, and hauled her up to the surface, where the wave was beginning to slow down, but it still thundered down at a rate of knots. I put her on my shoulders, hands about my neck, and I tried to get a glimpse of the others. I couldn't see anything. Just as I was about to panic, Claire hit the surface, spluttering and gasping for air.   
"Claire!" I called, as loudly as I could above the noise.  
"L-Leon!" she called back, still trying to get breath.  
"Are you okay?"  
She nodded, but spun round.  
"Where's Chris?"  
Almost as soon as she finished saying this, Chris's head also broke the surface, just as the wave was reaching an acceptable speed. Soon, it was nothing more than walking pace, and the water level began to drop. We dragged ourselves onto a concrete platform just below a service duct, and we watched as the water carried on down the corridor.   
Claire exhaled.  
"We're safe...for now...What about Sherry?!" she suddenly realised, and I pulled Sherry off my shoulders, and lay her on the ground. She was pale and unconscious, the wave hat not only hit her hard, but had held her underwater like that for plus one minute. She was pale, and not moving.   
Claire looked at me.  
"Do you know CPR?"   
I nodded.  
"Then you get started with that, I'll get her into the recovery position"   
Claire was clearly worried, and with all her toughness and indisputable skill with weapons she was more sensitive than I could ever be. I was embarrassed at this, and watched as Claire arranged Sherry into the right position, and checked her mouth.   
I suddenly felt something buckle inside me, as if an emotion yet untapped had suddenly risen in me. My sister was lying in front of me, closer to death than I had yet seen her. My sister. My SISter. My SISTER. MY SISTER!!  
I suddenly felt protective, desperate to save my only remaining sibling.   
"SHERRY!!" I suddenly screamed.  
Claire and Chris looked at me, Claire allowed a tender smile to let slip.   
I suddenly began to do the moves in what seemed to me to be in the right order. Check the airways, and pulse. No pulse. I did what I thought came next: breathed into her mouth, made small precise blows to her chest. Come on Sherry I thought Please don't give up.  
"COME ON!!" I screamed at the form of my sister before me "YOU'VE NEVER GIVEN UP BEFORE!!"   
Claire put a hand on my shoulder.  
"Leon...Calm down..."  
"I can't..." was all I could manage.   
I just kept going. I repeated the process. Once. Twice. Three times I repeated the process. Just as I was beginning to give up hope, I could feel her heartbeat. Suddenly, Sherry's eyes fluttered open and she coughed up a couple of mouthfuls of water. She coughed for nearly twenty seconds...and she looked up at me with watery eyes. There was something about her expression that suddenly made me collapse inside.   
"I...thought I'd lost you...." I said, tears streaming down my face, suddenly flinging my arms around her.   
I held her tight, not wanting to let her go.   
"Leon...you saved me..." she whispered.  
"Yes...I couldn't lose you" I whispered back.  
Claire was almost in tears, she was biting her lip trying not to let go of that spluttering noise people make when they start to cry. Even Chris looked on with a respecting look, smiling softly.   
  
When the sentiment was over, we went back to what we did best: Zombie-bashing. While it occurred to us we were lost, we still met the odd cohort of the un-dead who were lurching down the corridors, hungry for the flesh of the still living. A shot from a magnum would easily sever the head from the neck of most zombies we encountered, and it was the same here. Perhaps two hours passed as we walked, time flew by pretty quickly.  
We headed down the large sewer. Quite where it led was a mystery. We just hoped it would lead somewhere. We eventually hit a large, metal pair of double doors.   
"Any questions?" Chris asked nobody in particular.  
We all shook our heads, and began to work on yanking open the double doors. They were quite new, with large handles and appropriately painted yellow and black striped DANGER seals.   
"Right?" Chris said.  
"Right" Claire and I replied.   
We all heaved on the doors, and after some effort, managed to pull them slightly open. Inside the sealed doors was a fairly wide open area...with a large elevator door at the end, with a large painted word on the metal floor. It read: ELEVATOR  
We walked up to the elevator, Sherry peered at a sign beside it.  
"Hey, this takes us up towards the ground level - Towards the upper rim of the volcano...and from there there's a path that takes you down, it says here" Sherry said.  
I sighed.   
Thank god.  
  
  
Going up?!  
  
We made the decision to hit the surface and get off the island as soon as possible. Escape was the only solution. If this 'Nemesis' as Kemmin called it, was chasing Sherry and I, then Sherry and I would have to be out of its range, because the way Kemmin had talked about it, we didn't want an encounter.   
So we trotted into the lift expecting nothing special. As far as we were concerned, we'd made our escape. How wrong we were. I decided to take the opportunity to talk to Claire for a while.  
"Claire...I didn't realise up until now...."  
"Leon" she said smiling "Please don't get all sentimental on me"  
"No, you're right" I said, licking my lips "You see, I haven't had a chance to show that I love you that much yet..."  
"Well you have..." Claire said, and we were immediately embarrassed. Chris let off the faintest of faintest chuckles.   
"I meant romance. I want us to really spend time together. As in quality time. Not time spent running around shooting zombies"  
"We will..." Claire said, touching my cheek, smiling "We will, don't you worry"  
I smiled back, and then leaned over to kiss her. She allowed me to do so. We kissed for a good minute or two, punctuated by the voice of Chris saying 'If you stick your tongue any further down her throat you'll be able to find out what she had for lunch'   
As I kissed Claire, I heard Sherry elbow Chris.  
"Just let them enjoy themselves"  
Chris looked at her, and shrugged his shoulders.   
"Hey, I'm just havin' some fun kiddo"   
"Perhaps it isn't fun for them" she said.  
"Look Sherry, it's not as if I don't know what love is! There's somebody I've left behind whom I care for"  
"Who's that?"  
Chris sighed.  
"Jill...Please don't get in trouble, please!"   
As I looked away from Claire to Chris, his expression was one of sadness.  
Somehow, I felt as if this moment was also important. Not to me maybe, but perhaps it was a turning point for Chris. I knew he took the Umbrella business seriously, but he masked it with smugness and occasionally I got fed up with him. But until I'd seen Chris like that, I hadn't felt an overwhelming deal of sympathy for the man. I realised that he was the man who'd carried the whole Umbrella ordeal on his shoulders since the summer of 1998, and that maybe the only way he could hide his true worry for Claire, whom I knew he felt very protective of, was to be overly cheerful. I remember reading his diary, and until now, his anger at Umbrella, his brotherly love for Claire and his seeming longing for a lady named Jill Valentine whom I had not met.  
"Chris...You okay?" Claire asked.  
"Yeah...I'm fine" he said, smiling weakly.   
"It's okay Chris, we'll find Jill" I added, helpfully.  
He smiled at me.  
"Thanks Leon...It's good to see my sister with a man who deserves her"  
"Thanks" I said.   
"I'll allow you to have a permanent relationship with her, on one condition"  
"What's that?"  
"I be the best man at the wedding"  
We all laughed, including Sherry.  
"Can I be the bridesmaid?" Sherry said, adding to the joke.  
"Of course..." I said "...Sis"  
"Aw, shuddup bro" she replied.   
Claire tousled her hair.  
"You okay Sherry?"   
Sherry was dirty, bruised and cut up a little, so maybe the question was rhetorical, but Sherry still shone with alarming energy.  
"I'm okay Claire" she said, brightly. Considering what she'd experienced and heard, she was looking pretty cheerful.   
Just then, we heard a distant bang. At first, I thought it was an elevator error, but my wild guesses never hit the mark. We were at first surprised, and then terrified to see the side of the elevator dent inwards, violently. The elevator shook slightly as the pounding finally tore open the elevator wall, leaving a gaping hole. A hand about the size of the weight on a set of dumbbells, and I mean the large kind, crashed through the side of the elevator. The hand was closed tightly in leather fingerless gloves, the skin of the hand was a bit like that of the zombies - Like dried, rotting paper; but it was obvious that this hand was much stronger than any of the zombies hands could be. Its owner had total control of it, and right now this hand groped around.   
"It's the freakin' Nemesis!!" Chris screamed.   
An incredibly ugly head forced its way in as the thing tried to clamber in. It was a truly horrible looking thing. A mouth that looked like a stretched human's mouth, but with sharper teeth, tiny white beady eyes that looked evil, and what looked like a sewn together skullcap.  
Its body seemed to mostly be clad in a leather coat, but even we could see the built-in shoulder rocket launcher that was seemingly fused into its body. Various tubes were visible in its neck area, the tubes disappearing in and out of its putrid skin. It looked very strong, and not in the least bit friendly. Claire pulled Sherry back, we all made an effort to lean against the wall as hard as possible   
It then growled.  
'BIRKIIIIN...' it said, in a gravely, echoey kind of way.   
"It can speak?!" Sherry yelped.   
"...I don't think it's here for a friendly chat though" I said.   
The Nemesis climbed inside, standing at a clear eight and a half feet in the nine foot high elevator (at least that's how I estimate it). There was quite a large space between us and the Nemesis, probably about thirty feet, mainly because it turned out we were in a heavy freight elevator. Quite why it lead into the sewers and how the Nemesis had gained entry to the shaft was beyond me, but it was pretty obvious that these things didn't matter right now.  
I suddenly realised it was turning towards Sherry. She was its next target.  
How dare it!! HOW GODDMANED DARE IT!!!!  
"HEY!! ASSHOLE!! I'M OVER HERE!!!" I screamed at it "THE OHER BIRKIN!!"   
The Nemesis stopped dead in its tracks, and turned towards me.   
"Leon!" Claire screamed, her face a mask of fear.   
Mine had both extreme fear and anger as the creature stepped towards me in its steady and slow gait.   
I turned to Claire and Sherry  
"When the elevator stops, get out of here!!"  
Strangely enough it was Sherry who replied  
"I'm not leaving you behind! You didn't give up when it seemed like I would die - So why should I with you?!"   
Claire nodded.  
"We're escaping with you Leon! I need you, Sherry needs you and so will the children!"   
I looked at Claire's beautiful face, and saw her truly concerned for me. I knew I didn't want to lose her. She didn't want to lose me. We both exchanged a look that said 'I love you' and then suddenly the doors slid open with a metallic noise. Chris, Claire Sherry and I practically fell out, running as one into the dark tunnel in front of us. At the end were artificial glowing lights. And the glimpse of a darkish very early morning sky.   
The exit. We'd made it. Or so I thought.   
"The exit..." Chris panted as we ran "...we're outside!"   
We could hear the Nemesis chase us as we ran, its steps increasing in pace as it began to break into a run. We ran, even little Sherry hammered along desperately trying to escape the nightmare that was following us.  
  
Luck be a lady tonight  
  
We ran out into the dark morning, the rain still beating down on the ground, albeit not as hard as before. We skidded down the stony path that began to lead in a spiral down the side of the mountain, and though the Nemesis was closely following us, we were able to just keep ahead of it. Just. As we were beginning to run out of breath, Claire grabbed my arm.  
"A slope! Let's try and lose that creature by jumping down it"  
The Nemesis had not yet come around the corner, so we all leapt for the slope.   
It wasn't a pleasant downward journey, I rolled down the slope painfully, small sharp stones digging into my back as I rolled, and I just held back a short violent cry as I hit a small boulder that I rolled over on the way down. Just as I felt the journey would never stop, the slope flattened out and I rolled into the jungle. I stopped after a few feet. I lay there for nearly a minute as the Nemesis stopped at the top of the slope, looking around confused. Then, it continued at a steady walk down the slope. I didn't move until its footsteps disappeared.   
I exhaled.   
"We lost it. For now" I said.  
"Yeah, but it'll be back" Chris pointed out.   
I turned to Claire.  
"You okay?"   
"I'm fine" she said, nodding.  
"Yeah, me too" Sherry chipped in.   
I smiled, more out of relief than anything else.   
"Right" Claire said "It's obvious that escape is going to be extremely unlikely with that thing hanging around. We need to get rid of it"  
"What do you have in mind?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.  
She grinned.   
"Give me the map please Sherry"  
  
Claire outlined her plan. Quite when she'd come up with it I had no idea. However, I had to admit it was one of the most audacious plans I had ever witnessed the birth of.   
Claire explained, with the map, that there was a type of melting pit where they dumped biohazardous material that was more dangerous than was absolutely necessary. She suggested that if we could somehow lure the creature into the plant area, we could lead it into the pit. I asked how the creature could actually be fooled into falling into the pit. Claire pointed out the existence of heavy machinery in the pits vicinity that could be used as a 'prompt'  
After that, we all started adding ideas, until we had a basic plan worked out. One of us would go to turn the main generator on to activate both the pit and the machinery around it, which would take us directly through both the Hunter and Reaver compound. Turning on the generator would also require us to use a computer terminal in its main control room, which was down several flights of steps whose safety was not guaranteed. Franks sheets and maps had really helped out there.  
Another would have to head for the plant and ready the machinery once the signal was given to move. That person's job would also be to protect Sherry, and hold off the Nemesis if push came to shove.   
After all, Sherry was one of its targets - If it got anywhere near her, we'd be in serious trouble.  
I knew that only one person could be chosen for the dangerous stuff.   
"I'll turn on the generator" I said, standing up.  
Claire also stood up.  
"If you're going then I'm going with you"  
"No" I said sternly "You have to look after Sherry"  
"It's okay, Chris can do that" Sherry said, and turned to Chris "Right Chris?"  
"Of course" Chris said, nodding "You two go and turn on the generator"  
I sagged.  
"I can't put you in danger..." I muttered, helplessly.   
"Leon, we're up to our knees in it already...so it won't make any difference...and if we die then we die together"  
She smiled at me. Not a cheerful or excited smile, but an adequately happy and determined smile.   
I sighed.  
  
Usually, music makes a good accompaniment to action movies. Sometimes it's fast, paced and adrenaline pumping, and on the other hand it can be piano-solo kind of music. But none of this fitted our journey appropriately, and I was struggling to think of the appropriate music. I'm not, at first sight, a particularly cultured person, but I was brought up in New York as a child by my 'parents' and when you're there and if you're the kind of inquisitive child I was, then you'll know Broadway was a great source of musical inspiration. I remember seeing a production of Guys and Dolls at one of the bigger theatres, and I remember laughing and tapping my foot along to the whole musical. I still know all the musical numbers that I was so enthralled by, and even afterwards I sought to learn them as much as possible. So as I think of a song suitable to accompany our escapade, the only one I can think of is the immortal Luck be a lady tonight, sung by Sky Masterson in the last gambling scene.   
They call you lady luck...but there is room for doubt...  
Claire and I hurried into the jungle, carefully following the path to the gate of one of the Hunter compounds. Claire twisted the handle, and pushed it in. We loaded our guns, and ran in.  
Sometimes you have a very unladylike way of runnin' out...  
The hunters attacked, one by one. Bullets thudded into their flesh and they were thrown backwards in that horrible death scream of theirs.   
You're on this date with me, the pickings have been lush...  
We worked our way through the hunters with surprising speed, I pulled the trigger with a repeating action reloading when necessary.  
And yet before this evening is over you might give me the brush...  
As the hunters wore thinner, we were able to move more quickly. Within fifteen minutes we were on the border of the Reaver compound. I turned to Claire.  
"Ready?"  
"Ready as I ever will be" she replied, smiling.  
You might forget your manners, you might refuse to stay...  
We encountered the Reavers within a minute of climbing over the fence. The Reavers were just as I'd seen them in the laboratory, black, horrible and very dangerous. They were even tougher than the hunters, they could somehow leap up to ten feet high and bear down on you with surprising force. I was knocked flat to the ground by a screaming Reaver, a claw just catching my cheek as I shot a few magnum bullets into it. I touched my cheek. I was bleeding. It had made quite a nasty cut on my cheek, and I could tell I would bleed more when the time came.   
Claire and I fought back to back, just waiting for the creatures to advanced, screaming mentally at them to 'Give it their best shot'   
"Just like old times, huh?" I said, breathlessly, as we finished off more creatures practically by the truckload.  
"You don't say" she said without a hint of sarcasm in her voice.  
And so the best that I can do...  
We walked on, our future uncertain. We may have wandered for over an hour like that.  
Is PRAY...  
The jungle was like a void, it was all around us, and even the map only helped a little. We vaguely guessed the direction of the generator shed, and headed along the side of the fence to try and reach a possible end, if there was one.   
Luck be a Lady tonight...  
We did reach a clearing, in the middle of which sat a low concrete building with a road disappearing from it into the jungle and various signs. The clearing was surrounded by a high electric fence. However, we correctly guessed that it wasn't on. We clambered up the metal wire fence, and dropped down the other side relatively unscathed, bar a few cuts and bruises.   
Luck be a Lady tonight...  
We headed towards the low building, hope clashed with tension as we chose to enter the building immediately to avoid any further contact. My legs were no longer under my control, but were merely tools that motivated themselves to propel me forward as I entered the shed with the girl I love at my side. People read action adventures expecting to see endless action with no sentiment, love or emotion. Well, LIFE IS NOT LIKE MOVIES!! Emotion does exist. Fear. Sadness. Despair. Love. All of these exist, and they all have their place and none more so than here.  
It was dark inside.   
Luck, if you've ever been a Lady to begin with, Luck be a lady tonight...  
We advanced cautiously, feeling for any treacherous steps, listening for any scrabbling that could belong to any kind of creature. We heard little, but the drip-drip of condensation on the ceiling, caused presumably by the geothermal heat. This place was, after all built on a dormant volcano island.   
Claire flicked on the torch, and we probed around the upper floor. As the torch beam hit darkened pieces of machinery, the beam also highlighted labels that read WARNING: HIGH VOLTAGE! And the daft stickman picture of the man being electrocuted in the symbol that usually accompanied the warning. The machinery was covered in a layer of dust, and one or two corpses that would probably regress into zombies within the hour lay nearby. In fact, we hadn't so much jumped the gun as dropped it when one of the zombies actually grabbed Claire's ankle, seeking a mouthful of flesh. Despite its re-animation, Claire calmly showed it what-for by putting two bullets through its skull.   
A lady shouldn't leave her escort, it isn't fair - it isn't right...  
We studied the machinery. After a few minutes, we finally found the switches that started the power to most of the lower areas. It needed resetting in order for the power to actually be successfully turned on. So, I went through the highly dangerous process of flicking all the switches in the right order, although I performed the actions slightly cautiously, because if any mistake would be made, I would be filled with more electricity than the whole of Las Vegas is in a fortnight.   
Claire held the torch between her cheek and shoulder so that the beam was constantly on the switches. With her hands, she looked at one of the sets of plans, which also detailed the reset procedures for all the power generators on the island. Quite how Franks had foreseen a need for this, I still don't know. He'd obviously thought about it pretty hard, when he wasn't stoned out of his mind.   
Claire calmly guided me through the whole process...Power breakers, switch A, buttons 1,2 and then 3, and finally the large handle on the machine. As I finally pushed the last handle upwards, there was a loud whirr and a hum.   
"There's power, but it actually needs to be restored to the right places" Claire pointed out as we saw the power consoles lights glow green, apart from a single yellow one which was labelled POWER DISTRIBUTION.  
We then explored the other areas on the upper floor. Our search was fruitless, only revealing more dust-covered pieces of machinery and disused equipment that hadn't been used for sometime.  
We found the downward stairs. We took our first steps.   
A lady shouldn't walk all over the room, and blow on some other guy's dice...  
We tentatively advanced down the staircase, just waiting for an inevitable attack. We found one. A vicious looking hunter with razor sharp claws screamed its battle-cry, and charged us. Claire and I unleashed a hail of bullets into it that threw it to the ground, thrashing for a moment before dying in a pool of its own blood. It must have broken in when the power went down. We continued our journey down the metal staircase. It took us a full five minutes to make our way down, and then we were confronted by a huge metal security door with a small card reader beside it. As if on instinct, I used Frank's access card in the reader, which seemed to be powered by a separate generator. It beeped, and the doors slowly slid open with the sound of compressed air being released. We stepped into an enormous room. Actually, room was a rather inadequate word to use with this cavern. It was in fact, part of the volcano, and magma glowed worryingly below the enormous platform on which we stood, which had four doors leading off North, East, West and South.   
So let's keep the party polite...Never get out of my sight...  
The centrepiece was a large piece of machinery, whose huge amounts of cable and wiring ran into lesser pieces of machinery or disappeared into mysterious crevices in the wall, and purred like a sleeping cat. Like most large pieces of machinery that belonged to Umbrella we brashly walked up to it, ready to do what had to be done.   
Claire was probably better with computers than me, so I let her do the work. I handed over the card to help her get access, and then I watched her study the menu, and I looked on it as she began to type. After a while, she brought up a new screen.  
It read:  
  
LOWER/MIDDLE POWER INITIATION   
PROCESS BEGIN? (Y\N)  
  
Stick with me baby I'm the fella you came in with, so luck be a lady with me...  
Claire pressed 'y'   
There was a loud whirr, and then the message disappeared, only to be replaced by yet another message with an empty bar in the pop-up-box on screen. It was currently at 0%.  
"This may take a while" Claire said, leaning against the console.  
We stood and waited.  
A lady wouldn't flirt with strangers, she'd have a heart, she'd have a soul...  
We had been waiting for fifty minutes, and it was only at 85%.  
Then, we heard a loud rumble from beneath us, and wet sounding slurping sounds as the lava sloshed around. Then, a louder rumble shook the room.  
"That sounds pretty bad" I said "I don't think we have an awful lot of time"   
Then, there was another, slightly more artificial banging that came from somewhere behind us. We slowly turned in dread of what we knew would be behind us. It was the Nemesis, tall and as ugly as ever.   
"The Nemesis?!" Claire gasped "But I thought we lost it! How did it find us?"  
"Somehow" I said as the Nemesis began to advanced towards us again "I don't think that question really matters at the moment"  
She turned to me.  
"Could we take it down?"  
I thought. The T-90 had been hard enough to take down, and I'd had a shoulder mounted Rocket launcher. Considering that Nemesis not only looked tougher than the T-90, I also knew our weapons were ineffectual.   
As we stood there sweating, the Nemesis appeared to slow. We were not able to understand what it was doing at first, but when we did, we couldn't have moved faster.  
A rocket hummed past us, narrowly missing us and the computer, and impacting on the thick, rocky volcano interior walls.   
"Damn! I forgot about its rocket launcher!" Claire cursed.  
I turned to her.  
"We can at least hold it off until the initiation process finishes" I pointed out.  
Claire nodded, and loaded her submachine gun that was slung over her shoulder. I had completely forgotten that I had one, and I also loaded it. With fifteen magnum bullets left and four clips to my submachine gun, things were not looking as good as they could have been.   
Roll 'em, Roll 'em, Roll 'em, Roll 'em Snake eyes ROLL 'EM!  
I unhitched the safety catch, and looked at Claire, touching her cheek for a moment before we split up to fight the creature.   
I levelled the gun and fired. The demonic-bark of the rifle sound chattered into the humid air, and the Nemesis was temporarily prevented from firing another missile by the hail of bullets that smacked into him. Claire immediately backed me up, and she also emptied her clip into it. I rolled to the left, and Claire to the right as the creature lunged at us with a tentacle that whipped out from its leather clad form, the razor sharp end just missing both of us as it leapt forward with surprising force.   
I found my feet again, and jumped up, seeing the Nemesis turn towards me again. I threw myself sideways as the Nemesis charged me again. Damn, it was fast! Claire was frantically reloading her weapon with another clip, and I found myself taking pot shots at it.  
So let's keep the party polite...  
We must have continued like that for nearly ten minutes, until the Nemesis weakened under our shooting, and it keeled over onto the ground.   
There was a loud beep, and there was the sound of an enormous power up. Then the lights clicked on one by one. As power began to refill the area like a mould, Claire walked over to me.  
"Is it dead?" Claire asked.  
I looked down at the creature. The T-90 had also suspiciously keeled over when I'd unloaded enough gunfire into the thing, and it had seemed well enough to come back again to chase me five or six times.   
Claire, I suspect, had had a similar story with the G5 aka my dad from what she'd told me.  
"I wouldn't think so" I said.  
Claire pulled out the map.  
"If it's not dead, then we'd better make a move"  
"Right" I said.  
Claire pointed to the map.  
"The eastern door to this room takes you down a long corridor that ends in the service building, just adjacent to the melting pit room. Heavy security, but we should be able to get through since we know the Pass-codes and we've got Frank's security access card"  
Pass-codes were another thing Franks had left us. He'd forseen everything, but that wasn't going to mean I would start liking him. I could feel his presence even now.  
I confronted him.  
"Right Franks, we're getting off the island and you are going to leave my head when we have done so! UNDERSTAND?!" I mentally screamed at him.   
Franks apparition sighed.  
"Fine" he said, coldly.   
Back in reality, Claire shook my shoulder.  
"Uh...Leon?"  
I blinked, and shook myself.  
"Okay, let's go" I said.  
Never get out of my sight...  
We headed towards the eastern door, ignoring the rumbling beneath us that was occasionally flittering into my range of hearing.   
We went through, and used the card reader beside it to lock it. Then, we ran down the corridor, hopefully without a pursuer.   
I know how you've treated other guys you've been with, so luck be a lady with me...  
It was a wide corridor, metal in construction and hexagonal in shape. It just seemed to stretch away for miles, and the lights shone on reflective metal surfaces. It was like running through a tunnel of mirrors in some respects. We ran, and when we were getting short on breath, we slowed the pace to a mere jog.   
We began to take our time, relax a little. Ever since we'd left Sherry and Chris, more than an hour had elapsed. I checked my watch, exhausted. It was three a.m. Sun up in a few hours.   
The welcome thought of sunlight gave me a little energy, and Claire and I walked towards the end of the tunnel.  
LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT...  
I turned to Claire.  
"What do you think that rumbling was?"  
LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT...  
Claire turned to me.  
"I don't know...but I sure hope it wasn't what I think it was"  
LUCK IF YOU'VE EVER BEEN A LADY TO BEGIN WITH, LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT...  
I nodded. I knew what she suspected.  
"Any chances of an eruption?" I asked, knowing she couldn't answer such a stupid question.   
"I don't know Leon...I just don't know..."  
She bowed her head.   
"I'm scared, Leon"  
I hated to admit it, but I was too.  
"Me too" I said, quietly.   
We stopped, and I just held her against me. I felt her warmth, her scent...  
"I'll never let anybody hurt you" I said, determinedly "I'll make sure that nothing happens to you, Sherry...or the twins"  
My new objective in life. Keep them safe.  
Luck let a gentleman see (LUCK LET A GENTLEMAN SEE...)  
We let go, and Claire smiled softly at me.  
"Come on. Let's nail that son-of-a-bitch once and for all" she said, in that determined voice of hers.  
I nodded, and we were suddenly distracted by a loud roar from behind the door we had come from. The Nemesis was back.  
How Nice a dame you can be (HOW NICE A DAME YOU CAN BE...)  
"Let's move" I said  
Luck be a lady, be a lady with me!  
We sprinted off down the corridor.   
So let's keep the party polite...  
I think. I breathe. I run. Or is it, we think. We breathe. We run.  
Never get out of my sight...  
Perhaps Claire was thinking similar blank thoughts as me...  
I know how you've treated other guys you've been with, so luck be a lady with me...  
All I could think of was the door ahead.  
So luck be a lady (LUCK BE A LADY)  
The door we had left was now nearly a mile behind us.  
Luck be a lady with me (LUCK BE A LADY!)  
The door wasn't far from us. Maybe about twenty-five metres...  
ROLL WILL YA, ROLL WILL YA, WHAT'S THE MATTER? ROLL THE DICE!!  
Ten metres...  
COMIN' OUT, COMIN' OUT, COMIN' OUT, COMIN' OUT RIGHT!  
We reached the door.  
HA!!!  
  
Face Off  
  
We slammed the door behind us breathlessly, taking care to security lock it, and leaned against it panting.   
"Well...at least we've got a little room between us and it..." I said, breathlessly.  
We looked at the building we'd stumbled into. It was an enormous warehouse type of building, with heaps of industrial equipment just lying around untouched. The roof must have been about sixty feet high, and the walls were bog standard concrete. The buildings were fairly dimly lit, but most of the light was created from the liquid metal in the enormous pit furnace, that glowed brightly with a reddish orange light.  
The light glinted off the surfaces of forklift trucks, enormous drills and unrecognisable pieces of construction equipment. There were also biological containment units, along with other construction machines that looked fairly new. We found out later that Umbrella had designed these machines themselves, and the ones that sat in front of us that looked like forklift trucks were like jackhammers, but more powerful. It used the body and engine of a pick-up truck, but was mounted with more machinery, and what looked like an enormous girder, or drill-bit but without the serrated edges that was sticking out of its front, on a lift so that it could change height.   
The drill-bit was attached to what looked like a cannon, and it certainly looked like a mean piece of machinery. Claire and I approached it, and inspected its cab.  
"It's just like a forklift truck, but with extra levers and buttons I don't recognise. What is this thing?"  
I spotted a manual sitting inside the machine on the seat, and I picked it up, looking at it.  
"What does it say?" she asked.  
"It says..." I said, flicking through a few of the pages "...That it works on the same basis as a railgun, and the jackhammer is charged with electricity and fired into a surface that needs demolishing, recoiling back on hydraulics. Apparently this process can happen quite quickly, and is more powerful than most other pieces of demolishing equipment"  
"Woah" Claire said, staring at the piece of machinery.  
Just at that moment, a horrible thought climbed into my mind, and I suddenly realised that we didn't know where Chris and Sherry were.  
"Hey!" Claire said, as if reading my thoughts "Where're Chris and Sherry?!"  
"I don't k-"  
I nearly finished my sentence, but from the large doors to the enormous warehouse there came an aggressive shouting.  
"STAY BACK! STAY BACK!! DON'T COME NEAR US!!"  
We turned quickly to see Chris, with Sherry practically clinging to him stepping backwards, firing shotgun rounds into some zombies, lurching menacingly toward them.   
With a shudder we remembered that the Nemesis wasn't far behind, and decided to get the ball rolling.  
"CHRIS!!" Claire yelled.  
Both Chris and Sherry turned as the last zombie fell, their faces changing to that of pure delight.  
"Claire! Leon!" they both shouted.   
We ran towards each other, and met somewhere near the blast pit.  
Claire and Chris hugged, brother and sister reunited again.   
It was time for another brother and sister to be reunited again.  
Sherry practically leapt into my arms, and I enjoyed the warm feeling as I embraced my sister.  
After the greetings, we thrust ourselves into the deep end again.  
"Having fun?" Claire asked, wryly.  
"Just meeting old friends" Chris said, casually "You know, reminiscing times gone by"  
"I'm sure" I said, grinning.  
"And you...?" Sherry asked.  
"The Nemesis isn't far behind us" Claire said "We don't have much time to set this trap"  
"We did reset the power" I said "But we were surprised by Mr. Nemesis when we were close to completion, took us a while to bring him down"  
"You mean he-" Chris began  
"No" I said "The Nemesis is far from dead. I reckon we've got two or three minutes"   
"So, who's going to be bait?" Chris asked.  
I was about to open my mouth, when Sherry interrupted.  
"I'll do it" she said.  
"What?!" Chris exclaimed.  
"Sherry, what are you talking about?!" Claire added, just as loudly "You could get killed!!"   
"Claire, Leon..." she said, plainly "I haven't been much use while we've been here, and so I think it's time I paid you back, because you saved my life before"  
"Of course you-" I began  
"PLEASE! If all goes well, then we're all okay, right?"  
There was a long silence. I felt awful at letting her do it, and also felt awful for not letting her do it.  
I sighed.  
"If you want to do it... Then promise me something..."  
"What's that?" she replied.  
I cradled her face in my hands.   
"You WILL survive. You WILL run if something goes wrong. Promise me."  
She nodded.  
"I promise" she said, softly.   
I straightened up.  
"Right" I said "I'll go with you"  
"Hey!" Sherry said "I thought-"   
"Claire and Chris can use this construction machinery to help knock the thing in, if we keep it distracted, then it'll ignore them and go straight for us"  
"Leon, why are you doing this" Claire said. It wasn't a question.  
"Because...I don't want you or Sherry to be hurt. Since I'm the other Birkin who's also the other target, if I was an ambusher, the thing would go for me, and not towards the blast pit. So you and Claire prepare yourselves...I'll stay here with Sherry"  
Claire looked solemn. As I looked closer, a tear crept down her cheek.   
"Please...be careful..." she said, close to breaking point. Chris put his arm around her to gently soothe her.  
"They'll be okay" he said.  
There was a loud bang behind us as the door began to dent. Claire and Chris immediately ran to take positions just behind the impressive looking rail-trucks we looked at earlier. Sherry and I turned to the door, and watched as it dented inards, and then exploded outwards like a ragged piece of tin.   
In the doorway stood Nemesis.   
It spied both Sherry and I.  
"Birkin..." it hissed in an almost animalistic fashion, and slowly stepped toward us. Quite why these things never appeared to be in a hurry mystified me, and would have further mystified me had the creature not suddenly picked up the pace into a sprint charging at me like a mad bull. Sherry and I ran, and as the Nemesis followed us, we heard Chris and Claire scramble up into two of the trucks.   
Sherry and I approached the melting pit.  
"Quick! Split up!" I shouted, and we both turned in different directions, running along the sides of the enormous glowing mass. Just for a moment, I caught sight of the red-hot liquid metal, as it swirled around thickly like an unnecessarily thick milkshake below, and beyond the metal railing, the Nemesis looking rather confused. He stood still for a few moments, and there was a great roaring of engines as the Nemesis stood there, still trying to select his target, and as the Nemesis turned to see the sound, the two trucks smashed into him, knocking the creature completely off balance before it plunged downwards into the melting pit.   
I didn't see it hit the surface. I merely heard the 'GLOOP' as it disappeared into the liquid metal.  
I stopped, to see Claire and Chris in their vehicles, triumphant.   
"Pretty good moves there!" I called to them.  
"I'm getting used to killing enormous mutant creatures like that" Chris called back "It's become something of a hobby"  
We all met up again, and Chris climbed out of his vehicle, as did Claire.   
"Well...at least that's over" Chris said, breathing out.  
Claire was just about to speak, when a clanging interrupted her speech. We turned towards the un-fenced part of the melting pit. We were about twenty metres away, as Chris and Claire had reversed the trucks to avoid falling in, so we had a pretty good view of what happened next. An enormous clawed hand gripped the edge of the pit, followed by another.   
My blood turned to ice as four or five tentacles snaked up the two enormous muscular arms, and the Nemesis, now freed from clothing restraints leapt up onto the edge of the precipice. Ten feet tall it now stood, even bigger than before. Its body had been slightly warped by the effects of the hot liquid metal, but it had mutated further. It was even more muscular, and now looked even more deformed than before. It's head was larger, and the rocket launcher was now replaced by an enormous set of tentacle like tubes.   
Its evil face, also slightly changed, looked at us, and then the Nemesis in all its sickening glory threw back its head and roared, the war cry exploded through the warehouse and into the jungle.  
A challenge.  
We all stared at it as it tried to put out the small fires that dotted its body.   
I had to say something, but Claire managed to say it for me.  
"RUN!!!!" she screamed, and we all ran for it as the Nemesis charged again.   
Claire and I leapt as a tentacle whipped out and caused a few crates to implode, showering use with wood and tools, and we dodged again as another tentacle caused a metal mining drill to bend almost at a right-angle.  
We turned to it.  
Not turning back. Our trap had failed, and we now had to fight it out.  
The Ultimate Face Off.   
"How are we going to kill it?!" Claire yelled, as we threw ourselves clear again, turning its attention on Sherry.  
"We'll have to shoot it out" I said, and as one we withdrew our weapons and fired, just pressing the trigger, and reloading when we ran out. I leapt to one side, firing John-Woo style as I landed on my side, Claire following suit. Chris was also rapidly unloading shots into the thing, but our shots were like raindrops on its thick hide.   
I looked around wildly.  
There had to be another way, there had to be!  
I saw the two trucks, and even in my exhaustion fogged mind an idea sprang into my head. It was a long shot, and no mistake. It was also the only plan we had.   
"Chris!" I called, as Chris dodged the attentions of the monster, which just appeared to be going for anybody now "Try to slowly lead the creature to the edge of the pit!"  
"Slowly??!" Chris shouted with more than a slight degree of sarcasm, leaping to his right as another tentacle lashed out at him.  
"Chris-"  
"Yes, OKAY!"  
I turned to Claire.  
"Ready to live dangerously once again?"  
"Never got much choice, have I?" she said, dryly.   
"Get in the other truck and level the jackhammer on the truck at the level of its head"  
Claire nodded, understanding.  
"And we both-"  
"Yes. On either side"  
She ran to one of the trucks, and started it up. She steered it with the slightly over aggressive style of a person who spends too much time on a motorbike, and drove it across to the other side of the gap, leaving the engine ticking over. However, just as I was about to climb into my truck, The Nemesis turned and saw me. A tentacle whipped out, and in slow-motion it seemed, the creature wrapped the thing around my leg, and tossed me into the air. I flew upwards, in a dizzy world of my own, and was then smashed brutally by the thing around my leg in precisely the wrong way. The feeling was absolutely agonising, one of the various bones in my leg making a sickening cracking sound.  
It was agonisingly painful, and as I dropped to the ground, I screamed out in agony. The pain was brining me close to tears, and through the lens of pain and water, I caught sight of Claire, who was screaming in anger at the Nemesis. I felt tired. I was in pain. I also knew that we had to escape...we had to kill the Nemesis. Chris was too busy fighting the creature, Claire was already climbing down from her truck, and Sherry was crying.   
"No!" I cried out, wincing after I spoke "Stay there! Please...I can do this..."  
Claire was reluctant to stay, but I was already dragging myself towards the truck. The Nemesis was ignoring me again, as it assumed that I had been taken down. I tried to prop myself up on my good foot, dragging my damaged lower leg like a lump of rubber with no joints.  
I winced again as I hoisted myself into the truck, and used my good foot to press the accelerator while I started the engine. I drove it lazily, because the pain was the main thing on my mind, but I was just able to bring the rail-gun\jackhammer up to roughly Nemesis head height. Chris however, was slowly moving it towards the edge. He was actually leading it, leaping back and firing more shots as he went backwards.  
Then, it was in line with both Claire and me.   
"NOW!" I shouted, as loudly as I could manage.  
Everything happened slowly after that. I brought my hand came down on the FIRE button as hard as I could, and Claire also managed to get the timing just about right. Chris leapt out of the way, and the creature suddenly realised its position, and how it was impossible to change its destiny. The two enormous sharp and energised pieces of metal hurtled out of their launchers, and the two pieces of metal met in the middle of the Nemesis's head, crushing bone and brain. The energised metals reacted to the others touch, and exploded, blowing what was left of the brains of the Nemesis outwards in a spectacular explosion of blood and ragged pieces of flesh, also immolating its entire upper body in the blast. Then, the creature began to tip over, and like a tree about to fall, it fell backwards over the liquid metal, and disappeared once again into the glooping metal. This time, never to return. The hot liquid swallowed up the Nemesis, and it vanished from sight.  
'Game, set and match - loser' I thought, as I toppled off the truck and onto the ground.   
I felt weak after our battle.   
Claire rushed over to me, and cradled my head in her arms.  
"Leon! Are you okay?"   
I winced.  
"My leg...It's killing me..." I muttered.   
"We'll try and get outta here" she promised.  
I smiled. I believed her. I would always believe her.   
Chris and Sherry also rushed over, and I could see that Sherry was also in tears.   
"No...don't die..." she whispered, hugging me. I felt simultaneously embarrassed and happy, but too weary with pain to actually respond.   
Chris grinned, patting me on the shoulder.  
"You'll pull through, don't you worry" he said, more cheerful than he could have been.  
Claire performed a little emergency first aid on my leg from the medical supplies she'd had. Surprisingly, we hadn't actually encountered any poison plants or creatures. Although I suspected we'd find some someday.   
This aid would turn out to be pretty essential, and while I didn't feel any better, it had actually helped my leg more than I initially felt.   
I was helped up, and we left the warehouse, leaving the mayhem behind us. Turning our backs on Umbrella again.   
  
Outside, there was a small concrete building, which was a communications post, judging by the large antenna and dish that protruded from the ground.   
Chris had decided that finding the boat would be dangerous as well as nigh on impossible in my condition, so he let off a distress signal.  
As the sun was beginning to rise, Chris had decided against waiting and with the help of Sherry discovered the existence of a small airfield about two hundred metres from us. Hopefully, there would be an aircraft of some sort...  
I had been lying down, and Claire had been tending to my wounds, but I had heard most of what Chris was talking about.   
So, after fifteen minutes later and supported by Claire, I was helped to limp the distance. We all reached the airfield, which was really not much more than a large overgrown piece of tarmac. There was a small Personnel Transport plane that sat on the runway. Obviously somebody had prepared it and had not been able to get to it in time.   
We met assorted members of the undead, but Chris delivered them appropriately. As we approached the plane, a loudspeaker screeched into life, delivering the following announcement:  
'ATTENTION. ABNORMAL GEOTHERMAL ACTIVITY DETECTED. EVACUATION HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. WILL ALL STAFF AND GUARDS PLEASE HEAD TO THE AIRFIELD FOR IMMEDIATE EVACUATION. ERUPTION PREDICTED IN T-MINUS FIVE MINUTES'  
We'd been so involved in our battle with the Nemesis that we hadn't noticed any tremors. We felt them now. Rapidly coming and going, but the tremors were getting longer and getting more intense. We had barely got on the plane, when a loud explosion came from the volcano top. As we looked, the top of the volcano had exploded, and thick red magma was creeping down the slopes at an alarming rate. The volcano flattened out in a lot of areas, which was where we were. Right in the middle of it.   
I was laid across a couple of seats in the cockpit area, and Sherry sat down with me as Claire and Chris ran into the cockpit to get it started.   
I heard them saying:  
"How do you start this thing?!"  
"I'm not sure"  
"You were in the Air Force weren't you?"  
"Yes, but I didn't actually fly transports. I flew a fighter"  
"There isn't that big a difference is there?!"  
"Well, yes - The Instrumentation is differently placed for a starter"  
"Just try and fly the damned thing!!" Claire snapped.  
"OKAY!!" Chris exclaimed back, in irritation.   
After a few minutes, I heard a loud engine sound, and with the sound of a motorbike engine multiplied about ten or twelve times and a whoop of triumph from the cockpit, the plane jolted and began to move. Claire ran into the back and sat by Sherry and me, smiling in a 'We've done it' kind of way'  
Through the window by my head, I could see the land slowly begin to move as the plane moved forwards, increasing in speed. As we took off, the sun over to our east as Chris eased us into the sky.   
I sighed, deeply.   
We'd done it. We'd escaped from Angel Island. While the trip hadn't exactly gathered a lot of evidence to use against Umbrella, it had revealed more to me than I felt had been necessary, but was more important to me than our fight against Umbrella. We were flying at a pretty fast speed, and were now leaving the island behind pretty quickly.   
Chris was using the radio, and I stood up, very slowly.  
"Don't stand up" Claire said, trying to gently ease me back down "You've got to rest"  
"I'll rest when I've found out what's going on" I said, and stood up, Claire protesting.   
Sherry stood up, and volunteered to help me into the cockpit, at which point Claire rolled her eyes, smiled and carried me on the other arm. As I was helped into the cockpit, Chris was speaking excitedly, and turned to us.  
"I've got communication with some American fighter jets! They heard the SOS distress call and came over to investigate"  
"AMERICAN jets?" Claire asked.  
"Yeah, seems a carrier, the USS Arizona, got permission to practice manoeuvres in the area, and they intercepted our distress call"  
I was more than a little suspicious at the presence of the US Navy in the area, and I was even more suspicious when Chris spoke to them again.  
"Hello? Are you still there?"  
There was a crackle, and then an answer with a Texan twinge  
"Positive Transport, we have you on our radar, we have an escort of F16's to guide you back to the Arizona, over"  
However, as we looked out of the large windows, we also saw a further group, consisting of two F16's with death-black markings and a single A10 Thunderbolt in similar colours pass-by quickly. A bomber?  
"Uh..." Chris was sounding nervous "...Please confirm the presence of two F16's and a bomber, a...Thunderbolt, I think?"   
There was a very long silence.  
"Negative, transport"  
We were just about to say something, when a thundering explosion followed by blinding white glow lit the cockpit and sky for approximately six or seven seconds, like a slowed down flash on a camera.  
I turned, and looking out of the window, I could see a glowing white dome expanding over the island. The dome of fire raced over the surface of the island, enveloping all of the forests, buildings and the volcano in destructive nuclear fire, and an enormous mushroom cloud thumped upwards into the early morning sky as the nuclear explosion cleaned the island of all life.   
Kemmin had perished, obviously.   
The explosion grew bigger, and changed colour before dying out. We decided not to look back.   
It was our code now. We couldn't look back. The future was too strong for us to be sentimental about the past. I suddenly felt more tired than I had ever done in my life before, and limped into the passenger section again. I Lay down, and closed my eyes. I heard Claire whisper as she lay down beside me  
"I love you, Leon. I love you so much" and kissing me gently on the forehead, before we both fell asleep, her face printed on the back of my eyes.  
I knew that I loved her too. And we'd have a lot to look forward to. We'd also have a lot we wouldn't want to look forward to. I could smell the nappies already. But for now, we could rest. For now we were bonded, in dreams as well as reality.   
Would our lives now become more complicated to a point at which it's unbearable?  
Then, as I was slipping into unconsciousness, I thought  
'Oh what the hell'  
And fell asleep.  
  
EPILOGUE  
  
You look Wonderful Tonight  
  
  
EIGHT MONTHS LATER  
  
To tell the truth, this shouldn't really be called the epilogue, simply because it isn't actually the end of the entire story. The story is far from over, and the Angel Island escapade was only a tiny fragment of our adventures to come.   
Nonetheless, I'll say what actually happened after I woke up on the plane journey back. I had actually been put into the medical bay of the Arizona, since the carrier had not been that far from where we were. I'd been tended to by the ships surgeon, and was kindly informed that I would require further proper surgery, but after that I would be able to walk again soon by the Medical Orderly.   
After what seemed like weeks, we found ourselves back on US soil, although slightly more discreetly than had been thought. We'd found ourselves put up in a luxury villa a few miles out of New York after a very long trip from the carrier to Los Angeles, where we'd been transferred to a civilian plane, and in turn were taken straight to New York. The Vietnamese authorities were demanding to know what exactly had happened, the US government was confused and Umbrella were surprisingly quiet. As the only survivors of the Angel Island incident, the island having turned out to be owned by the US government which was given to Umbrella for unknown reasons, we were not allowed to go free in a hurry. We were put up in the luxury villa, which even Bill Gates would have had trouble forking out for, and all my and the others medical bills paid for - Yes, Sherry had sustained some very nasty cuts, and Claire had sprained her wrist, while Chris had been battered, nearly sliced open by the Nemesis and cut up, but had been able to walk and move.  
My leg was a problem for quite a while. It was nearly a month or two after surgery that I could actually walk properly again, and that was with crutches. My leg slowly healed over the course of four months, and I soon found that I could walk normally once again. Running was something I phased in a little later, but I felt vaguely my own self again at last. It left an enormous scar, as the razor had dug through the flesh and torn a line through my leg, narrowly missing muscles. I did however have relapses - I occasionally found myself limping whenever I got angry or upset, and still do.   
We'd decided to try and enjoy ourselves and take our minds off the events of the previous months by attending a large party in a huge mansion somewhere just outside New York. We had been invited by the government to try and talk us out of the idea of mouthing off about Angel Island, as if the $300,000 placed in my account wasn't the most obvious bribe in the entire universe. They hadn't, however said anything about Umbrella - So we were not bonded legally to keep silence about them, which was fine to us.  
  
It was evening dress, and it was quite a surprise to see Chris dressed for the occasion in a tuxedo. Even Sherry looked very pretty in a dress that she'd chosen, and Claire looked stunning. Even eight months into pregnancy I was still dazzled by her, and even the bulk that she was heaving around had a strangely beautiful look to it. Not long. Only another three weeks or so.  
Names had been discussed on one of the lonely winter nights, and since we had discovered that the twins were a boy and a girl, we'd decided to call them Steve and Ada, for obvious reasons.   
We'd also been joined by Jill Valentine and Rebecca Chambers, who had made a surprise visit at the end of the third month, and moved in with us. Hell, the place was big enough. Jill and Chris had spent a lot of time together, and there was Rebecca, whom I found annoying at first but her sickly-sweet attitude was strangely likeable, and so we'd got on. Jill was a very pleasant lady, and a very beautiful one too, but - of course - not as beautiful as Claire. In MY opinion.  
Barry Burton, whom I hadn't met yet, was on his way they'd said a few nights before the party. The six of us, Chris, Jill, Rebecca, Claire, Sherry and myself were going to the party.  
It was a cold night. The sudden change in temperature had hit us pretty hard, not in the least Sherry. We had all been invited, and that did include my young sister.   
The large mansion house was very elaborate, very baroque but also strangely modern for its supposed style. There was also a band, who were playing songs from modern and older times. As we stood on the enormous marble dance floor, we heard America from West side Story, You've lost that Lovin' feelin' by the Righteous Brothers and one or two other oldies, while the modern selection consisted of Dancing Queen by Abba, How can I live without you by LeAnn Rimes amongst others, and they WERE all love songs, but very few got me going.  
I stood with a glass of champagne in one hand, and Claire in the other. We both stared out onto the balcony, out of which we could see the stars, like multitudes of diamonds spread over an enormous black cloth. We just looked out into the night.   
"It's such a beautiful evening..." she said suddenly.   
"Mmmm..." I muttered, half listening and half not.  
"It's one of those nights we can pretend Umbrella doesn't exist" she said, head on my shoulder.  
"Yeah..." I said in a similar tone. I had been thinking about popping the question to her for a while now, but it hadn't seemed right. But now, I felt right. The moon was right. The time was right.   
"Uh...Claire, do you want to get some fresh air?"  
She drew back for a second.  
"Uh...Sure, Leon"  
We headed away from Chris and the others who were standing listening to the current song that was playing, one which I did not recognise and into the cool night air. We stood for a moment, and I turned to her.  
"Claire...I need to ask you something"  
She shrugged.  
"Okay, go ahead"  
I took a breath. This would take some guts.  
"We love each other, right?"   
She nodded, confused.  
"Of course - What's the problem?"  
"There's no problem...that's why I've taken so long to ask this question"  
"You haven't asked it yet?"  
"No"  
So I asked her.  
"Claire..." I withdrew a small box from my pocket. I'd bought this when I'd been in New York and had planned to ask her this "...Would you do me the honour...of being...my wife?"  
She looked stunned for a moment, but her response wasn't long in the waiting.  
"Yes...I will!" she said, quietly at first, then her voice rose in volume. I could tell she was happy. She threw herself at me, and I held her, unsure how to respond. I just smiled.  
She withdrew from me, and we kissed, small and big. There was a loud bang as the fireworks started, and we watched as thousands of golden rockets met the heavens and exploded in a series of spectacular glowing colours.  
We were suddenly joined by Chris and Sherry, who immediately saw the ring in the box that I had presented to Claire.  
"YES!" Sherry cried, punching the air "What did I say?!"   
"So..." Chris grinned, patting me on the shoulder "...Thinking of marrying my little sister without MY permission?"  
I froze, but just for a moment.  
"Hey...I'm just kidding" Chris said, winking.   
I rolled my eyes.  
"Well, we are going to do it. As soon as possible"   
"Yeah...Preferably before I give birth" Claire added.  
We knew that we were marrying because we wanted to. Not because we HAD to.   
"I guess that this means you'll be needing a stag party? Leave it to me" Chris said, grinning again.  
Rebecca and Jill walked up.  
"What? Are Leon and Claire getting married?" Rebecca asked, a smile spreading across her face.  
"Hey, congratulations!" Jill said, smiling. She then turned to Claire "And you'll be needing a hen night?"  
Claire and I, looked at each other, and just laughed.  
It WAS funny.  
The band was now playing You Look Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton.   
I looked at Claire.  
"May I have this dance?"  
"Absolutely" she said, grinning.  
So as I took her, I heard Rebecca sigh.   
"Aren't they ROMANTIC?" she said, in mid-sigh.  
I heard Jill laugh.  
"You seriously need a boyfriend"  
I looked over to my left as I began to gently move with Claire to the music, and saw Chris turn to Jill.  
"Uh...Jill..."  
She put her arms around him, smiling.  
"I certainly will dance"  
"How did you-?"  
"I could tell"   
And that was that. Jill and Chris enjoyed a bit of intimacy, and Claire and I enjoyed ours.  
I looked at her again. She was stunningly beautiful. I was still dazzled by her, mesmerised by her. I held her close.  
We get to the party...  
And everyone turns to see...  
This beautiful lady...  
Walking around with me...  
And then she asks me...  
'Do you fell alright?'   
I said 'My darling...I feel wonderful Tonight'  
The strains of my favourite Eric Clapton song drifted over my head. I like some love songs, but not a lot. I like some grungy songs, but not a lot. I like some musical numbers, but not a lot. I guess I'm selective.  
I looked Claire deep in the eyes, and said, truthfully and with feeling, even in time with the music...  
"My darling" I said "You look wonderful tonight"  
She blushed.  
And so, as we danced on the edge of tomorrow beneath an exploding sky of gold, red and green light, we waited for the future to come.  
And invited it to take its best shot.  
  
TO BE CONTINUED...  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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